Akademgorodok

Located within Akademgorodok is Novosibirsk State University, 35 research institutes, a medical academy, apartment buildings and houses, and a variety of community amenities including stores, hotels, hospitals, restaurants and cafes, cinemas, clubs and libraries.

The House of Scientists (Дом учёных, Dom Uchyonykh), a social center of Akademgorodok, hosts a library containing 100 thousand volumes – Russian classics, modern literature and also many American, British, French, German, Polish books and magazines.

Academician Mikhail Alexeyevich Lavrentyev, a mechanician and mathematician, the first Chairman of the Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, played a prominent role in establishing Akademgorodok.

Full and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences had access to still higher level of service (akademicheskiy zakaz) and were eligible to live in single-family residences (called "cottages"), considered luxurious by Soviet standards, as most of the population lived in apartments in nine- and four-story multi-apartment buildings.

[1] The collapse of the Soviet Union saw many scientists, including whole cadres of Russia's top minds in the physical and theoretical sciences, reduced to penury.

Many scientists, including Lavrentyev's son, also named Mikhail and also an accomplished mathematician in his own right, were deeply involved in this renaissance.

While still minuscule by the standards of other countries, the private venture effort in Akademgorodok has breathed new life into what was once one of the Soviet Union's premier scientific centers.