Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic

Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic 

the highest scientific institution of the Byelorussian SSR. Founded on the basis of the Institute of Byelorussian Culture in 1929. Located in Minsk. As of 1969, posts include one honorary academician, 61 academicians, and 54 corresponding members.

In the academy there are five departments and 20 scientific research institutes. They include a department of physicomathematical sciences (scientific research institutes: physics, mathematics, physics of solids and semiconductors); a department of physicotechnical sciences (scientific research institutes: thermal and mass transfer, nuclear power, physical technology, technical cybernetics, mechanics of metal-polymer systems); a department of chemical sciences (scientific research institutes: physico-organic chemistry, general and inorganic chemistry, peat); a department of biological sciences (scientific research institutes: experimental botany, physiology, genetics and cytology); a department of social sciences (scientific research institutes: philosophy and law, history, economics, the Ianki Kupaly Institute of Literature, the Iakuba Kolasa Institute of Philology, and art studies, ethnography, and folklore). There are also a number of other scientific research establishments: a computer center, laboratories for geochemical problems, electronics, sections of microbiology, physiology, and the taxonomy of lower plants, the physics of nondestructive inspection, and others. The main library had more than 1.3 million items in 1968.

Research is primarily being done in mathematics (differential equations, computer mathematics, group theory), spectroscopy of atoms and molecules, the physics of solids and semiconductors, the physical bases of strength and plasticity, thermal and mass transfer, atomic power, the automation of production processes, the mechanics of polymers, the chemistry of inorganic natural compounds, the reactivity and kinetics of chemical reactions, radiation chemistry, the biosynthesis of chlorophyll, the taxonomy, ecology, and physiology of plants and animals, human physiology, microbiology, heterosis, the physiology of diseased plants, soil enzymology, the complex geological-geophysical-geochemical study of the Byelorussian SSR, the national economy, history, philosophy, and the literature and language of the Byelorussian people.

The academy publishes Izvestiia (Newsletter) in seven series (from 1940, in Byelorussian and Russian); Doklady AN BSSR (Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, Byelorussian SSR; from 1957); and the journals Inzhenerno-fizicheskii zhurnal (Engineering and Physics Journal; from 1958), Differentsial’nye uravneniia (Differential Equations; from 1965), and Zhurnal prikladnoi spektroskopii (Journal of Applied Spectroscopy; from 1964). It also publishes transactions of the institutes and other scientific literature and is engaged in preparing the Byelorussian Soviet Encyclopedia for publication.

Presidents of the academy have been V. M. Ignatovskii (1929–31), P. S. Gorin (1931–36), I. Z. Surta (1936–37), K. V. Gorev (1938–47), A. R. Zhebrak (May 1947–October 1947), N. I. Grashchenkov (1947–50), V. F. Kuprevich (1952–69), and N. A. Borisevich (since 1969).

REFERENCES

Kuprevich, V. F. Akademiia nauk Belorusskoi SSR. Minsk, 1957.
Navuka Belaruskai SSR za 50 god. Minsk, 1968.
Akademiia nauk Belorusskoi SSR: Ocherk istorii i deiatel’nosti. Minsk, 1968. (Bibliography, pp. 234–37.)

V. F. KUPREVICH