Popov Studying at College

A 31-year old Russian physicist is currently living in Leverett Towers and doing research at the university as part of a five-month visit to the United States.

Yu. M. Popov, a senior scientific worker at the Lebedev Institue in Moscow, a research institution similar in function to large government and private laboratories in this country, arrived in Cambridge two weeks ago.

An agreement between America's National Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. providing for the exchange of younger scientists is making his visit possible.

Hoping to familiarize himself with American methods of research and current theoretical concepts, the Russian scientist is now studying the theory of high stability hydrogen masers.

These are devices which can be used as clocks accurate to one part in 100 million million. They are expected to have important applications as standards of time in physical experiments.

He is working with the hydrogen maser group that is under the direction of Norman F. Ramsey, professor of Physics.

Popov has also done work with semi-conductors and molecular generators and amplifiers. He speaks English--a result of eight years of study in Russian schools--and will probably deliver lectures on his research to local groups.

So far, Popov has noted few differences between research as conducted in this country and as carried out in the U.S.S.R.

American and Russian physicists are concerned with the same problems, he explained yesterday. "In some areas you are ahead; in some, we are ahead," he commented. Soviet and American laboratories have similar equipment, he noted.

Within the limitations of available funds, Russian physicists are free to choose their own projects, Popov pointed out. Just as scientists here usually need grants to carry out large programs, a Soviet experimentalist must obtain funds from the Soviet Academy of Sciences if he wishes to conduct a project that would require the purchase of new equipment.

Because he studied what C.S. life would be like before he came here, Popov has had little difficulty adjusting to American customs.

Like many other people at Harvard, he finds Cambridge weather difficult to figure out. "It changes very often," he complains. In Moscow, the weather will be good--or bad--for two or three weeks at a time.