Urals Scientific Center of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR

a center organized in 1971 in accordance with the 1969 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On the Development of Scientific Institutions in Individual Economic Regions of the RSFSR.” The Urals Scientific Center was created from the Urals Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the Institute of Physics of Metals, and the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics.

The Urals Scientific Center concerns itself with basic research in the natural and social sciences and with problems whose resolution will accelerate the development of the economy and productive forces of the Urals; it also trains scientific personnel and coordinates the scientific research carried out by the various institutions of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, higher educational institutions, and organizations under ministries and departments. Research focuses mainly on mathematics, solid-state physics, polymer physics, chemistry and electrochemistry, metallurgy, earth sciences, ecology, and economics.

The Urals Scientific Center is supervised by a presidium, which has an interdepartmental council that coordinates research and the activities of the center’s 12 sections, two commissions, and four special-problem councils. The center comprises scientific research institutes, located primarily in Sverdlovsk, dealing with mathematics and mechanics, the physics of metals, chemistry, electrochemistry, metallurgy, and geophysics (with a network of stations). In addition to the A. N. Zavaritskii Institute of Geophysics and Geochemistry (with its station in Kungur, Perm’ Oblast), the center runs institutes of economics, as well as of plant and animal ecology (with a botanical garden, a station in Salekhard, Tiumen’ Oblast, and a department of microorganism selection and genetics in Perm’). The Il’men Preserve is also part of the center. The Urals Scientific Center coordinates research conducted by higher educational institutions and ministry and department scientific organizations located in Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Cheliabinsk, Perm’, and Orenburg oblasts and in the Udmurt ASSR.

As of 1976, the scientific staff at the Urals Scientific Center included three academicians and six corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and more than 700 doctors and candidates of sciences. During the period 1971–75, more than 500 scientific, technological, and other types of developments were introduced into various national economic sectors; the economic effect derived from their application amounted to approximately 38 million rubles. The scientists at the center maintain ties with 450 organizations within the country. There are also ties with scientific institutions in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the Polish People’s Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan. Through the Urals Scientific Center, the Nauka Publishing House publishes the journals Fizika metallov i metallovedenie (The Physics of Metals and Physical Metallurgy, from 1955), Defektoskopiia (Flaw Detection, from 1965), and Ekologiia (Ecology, from 1970).