From the History of the Origin of Science

Science had its origin in some distant era when people began to show desire to know about their environment and to record what they saw. In time, studies of these observations led to the idea that nature is knowable, that is operates according to ‘laws’.

The actual birth of science took place in prehistoric times, probably in Egypt and Babylonia, more than 2,000 years before our era.

But true progress in science did not begin until about the sixth century before our era, when Greek civilization began to flourish. The next 500 years was the age of the great philosophers of antiquity – Thales, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, and others.

Archimedes discovered some of the basic laws governing mechanisms and floating bodies. To Archimedes we owe the first application of mathematics to the description of nature. He was very far in advance of his time.

In the period from the Greeks to the Renaissance few contributions were made to the development of science. First in importance among the scientific achievements of the Renaissance was the idea that the sun, rather than the earth, is the centre of our system of sun, moon, and planets. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the prevailing idea was that of an earth-centered universe, as described by Ptolemy.

The Polish astronomer N. Copernicus assumed that the earth is merely one of the planets and that all of them moved about the sun. It is hard now to understand the courage required to advance an idea of this nature because of the great wave of opposition, which confronted Copernicus.

 

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How Science Grew in Russia

Russian scientists have always made great contribution to world science. Peter I established the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences as early as 1725. There the brilliant scientist Lomonosov worked in the fields of physics, chemistry, and astronomy and laid the foundation of the Russian literary language.

The peoples of this land produced many geniuses such as Mendeleyev who gave the world his periodic table of elements, mathematicians like Lobachevsky whom the world knows as the ‘Copernicus of Geometry‘.

We are proud of scientists like Lodygin who produced the electric lamp, and Popov who invented the radio, Tsiolkovsky who was the founder of the modern theory of space rockets. In scientific achievements we can also mention the name of the great biologist Mechnikov as well as Zinin who discovered aniline, and Vernadsky who did brilliant work in geochemistry.

These are individual names, which the whole world knows so well.

 

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Training Scientists

Young people learn to love science even while they are at school. Schools of higher learning develop the first elements of scientific training, which boys and girls get at secondary schools. At higher schools, for the first time, students begin to take part in scientific and engineering work. Besides their studies, they carry out research in different societies. Professors help students to develop their abilities and discover in which field of science and technique they will employ these abilities.

The main way in which research workers and higher-school teachers get their scientific training is the post-graduate course. The establishment of such courses in 1925 laid the foundation for the training of scientists.

Young people who graduate from schools of higher learning and want to take a post-graduate course take examinations in special subject, philosophy and a foreign language. There is also an extra-mural course of training for those who want to combine doing scientific research and not leaving work.

Universities and institutes provide post-graduates with all scientific instruments and experimental equipment, which enable them to carry out research and make important contributions to the development of science.

 

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