Tomsk Polytechnic Institute

(full name, S. M. Kirov Tomsk Polytechnic Institute), a higher educational institution founded in 1896 (opened in 1900) as a technical school; it became an industrial institute in 1934 and a polytechnic institute in 1944. In 1935 the institute took the name of S. M. Kirov.

As of 1975, the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute comprised departments of electrophysics, geological exploration and analysis, machine building, chemical technology, heat engineering, electric power engineering, automation and electromechanics, and automation and computer technology. There is also a physicotechnical department and a department dealing with the organization and management of industrial production. The institute has evening and graduate divisions and a preparatory division for certain categories of entering students; correspondence courses are offered in geology, chemistry, electromechanics, and electrical engineering, and there are also correspondence courses for the advanced training of teachers and engineers. The institute has 83 subdepartments, six special-purpose laboratories, three research institutes (nuclear physics, electron introscopy, and high voltages), and a nuclear reactor for teaching and research. The holdings of the institute’s library number approximately 2 million.

In 1975 enrollment was approximately 19,000, and there were more than 2,500 teachers and researchers, among them 40 professors and doctors of sciences and 660 docents and candidates of sciences. The institute confers the candidate of sciences and doctor of sciences degrees. Publications include Izvestiia (since 1903) and Kibernetika i vuz (Cybernetics and the Institution of Higher Education; since 1969).

Since its founding, the S. M. Kirov Tomsk Polytechnic Institute has trained more than 50,000 engineers. It was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1940 and the Order of the October Revolution in 1971.