Van Vleck, Doty Discuss Soviet Science

This is Part One of a four-part series in which Faculty members will evaluate Russian society in terms of their own fields. Thursday: Literature and the Arts.

Physics concentrators at the University of Moscow outnumber their Harvard counterparts ten to one, according to John H. Van Vleck, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.

Reports on Russian science by him and Paul M. Doty, professor of Chemistry, confirm the growing dominance of physics and mathematics in Russian education. Out of Moscow's 18,300 undergraduates, more than 2000 are physics majors--the "big men" on Russian campuses.

Similarly, scientific professors, especially members of the exclusive Academy of Sciences, are comparatively "big men" in the Soviet social scale. Doty likened them yesterday to top-level American executives in the amount of reward they reap from society, which Van Vleck commented on the large number of cars and chauffeurs they have. As Doty pointed out, "In Russia science is an area where you receive according to your ability."

The general technique of Russian research differs radically from that in the United States. For the Soviets, Doty said, comprehensive, systematic exploration largely supplants original thought. This determined, unromantic method has paid off in the study of plastics and molecular physics but the Russians lag behind the United States in chemistry and certain of the more abstract sciences.

Doty, who visited Russia in May 1958 after an invitation from the Academy of Sciences, was impressed by the rapidly rising ability of Soviet scientists. Though he considered them still slightly behind the United States as a scientific nation, he warned that "it is the gradient rather than the level" of study that counts. "Their goals are defined by what the state needs," he pointed out, "and their exhaustive investigations could put them ahead before long."

Van Vleck, a member of the five-man Harvard team sent to the universities of Moscow and Leningrad in February 1959, praised Soviet work in physics, stating that it had equaled the American level for the past ten years.