The Academy of Science Peter the Great worked out the project of the Russian Academy of Sciences in collaboration with a Western European philosopher Leibnits in 1723. The Academy was designed as the imperial scientific center comprising most prominent scholars in any sciences to serve the nation’s demands. However, Peter died in 1725 and never saw the Academy of Sciences open. The first official assembly of its members was opened the very same year. The three principles of the Academy were set once and for all. Firstly, it must be state maintained. Then the federal fund spending reached 24912 rubbles, twice as much as in France for the Paris Academy which was said to be the richest in the world. Secondly, the Academy’s members must provide theoretical achievements as well as serve practical demands of the moment. Finally, the Academy was to combine successfully researches development with teaching practice to ensure an adequate replacement of academician staff. At first, the Academy shared its building with the Kunstcamera. In 1783-1789 the Academy of Science main building was constructed by Quarenghi and decorated with historical mosaic panels “Poltava battle” created by Lomonosov, a great Russian chemist, engineer, philologist but still rather an active enlightener than a productive scientist. A member of the Academy in 1742- 1765, Lomonosov contributed greatly to its promotion. Still, the true scientific upswing in the Academy came in the 1830ths –40ths with the new era of observatories. The first and the most productive one was constructed in 1834 on the Pulkovskaya mountain and was set to work in 1939 as a part of the Academy. Soon the Pulkovskaya Observatory gained the world-wide reputation of the “astronomic capital of the world”, as American scientist Guld called it. At the Observatory the largest in the world telescope with the glass six meters in diameter was worked out. The Saint-Petersburg’s LOMO workers constructed the telescope in 1960. With the help of the telescope Saint-Petersburg’s academicians discovered a bulk of unique space objects and phenomena, such as volcanic activity of the Moon. In the second part of the 19th century the Academy focused on maths, chemistry and physics. The leading Saint-Petersburg’s academic schools in these sciences were the strongest in the world. Discoveries made by two leading academicians of the Saint-Petersburg’s chemical and chemico-physical schools, Mendeleev’s periodical law and Butlerov’s theory of chemical structure of substance are no doubt the greatest scientific achievements of the century. Another traditionally strong academic school in Saint-Petersburg was that of medicine. The Medico-Surgical Academy (since 1881 the Military-Medical Academy) was based on the Academy of Science. For the first decades it was headed by Pavlov. In 1904 became the first Russian physiologist to be awarded with Noble Prize for his theory of blood circulation and digestion physiology. The Socialist Revolution brought about most dramatic changes for the Academy. In the early 1920th the Soviet government brought in the rigid system of “class ration”. Brainworkers fell into the third category, the most shortly supplied with nourishment. In 1918 alone, nearly 20% of the Academy’s staff body starved to death. Yet another ordeal for the Academy was the long series of Stalin’s repression. Thousands of most talented scientists were either executed or imprisoned in the Stalin’s camps.

In 1934 the Russian Academy Presidium was transferred into Moscow. Nevertheless, all the scientific departments, the Big Academic Library and the Archives together with the academicians themselves stayed on in Saint-Petersburg. During the period applied and fundamental sciences experienced the greatest boom. As early as in 1920 the Academy’s physicists and chemists set to work the Atomic Commission. By the late 1930th the first cyclotron weighing one hundred tons was all but done by a great physicist Kurchatov. That was the first step toward producing the first hydrogen bomb.

In 1941 the wish to get its own nuclear deterrent made the government to reconsider its approach to the national scientific development. The academicians turned one of the most privileged social classes. However, they had to set aside all their theoretical researches to focus on the military goals. The whole-scale militarization of the sciences was brought to unprecedented level. The atomic physics and space exploration became top secret subjects with fabulous sums of budget money puffed into their development. Kurchatov, together with his already completed cyclotron, was transferred into the top secret territory “Arzamas 16” where the first nuclear bomb was constructed.

However, the other scientific fields got all but the same governmental attention. The enormous task subsidies for researches promoted sustained expansion of scientific performances, especially in chemistry and physico-mathematics. In 1956 Leningrad’s scientist Semyonov formulated the ramified chemical reactions theory. The same year Semyonov was awarded with Noble Prise in chemistry.

Still, other sciences like biology and Humanities were kept under most cruel ideological pressure. More then a hundred of astronomers and physicists were charged with “sabotage in research of the eclipse of the sun” and executed under the so-called “case of astronomers”. Biology was turned into sheer nonsense. Genetics and cybernetics were proclaimed anti-socialistic. Specialists in Humanities, especially philosophers and historians, were potential targets for ideological terror. However strangely, Saint-Petersburg was the city where genetics was founded and the Humanities flourished.

In the past decades, no matter all the financial difficulties of the time, Saint-Petersburg’s scientists kept up the highest level of the national scientific development. Despite the economical recession in the late 1990th, when many scientific centers and enterprises were shut down and the federal subsidies for scientific researches were phased out to the minimum, the Academy of Sciences managed to cope somehow with the crisis. Now the dramatic situation is clearly changing for the better and if some of the sciences are still underdeveloped, the most part of scientific performances are obviously promising. For example, in 2000 the vice-president of the Academy of Sciences Zhores Alfyorov was awarded with Noble Prise in physics.