By Acad. Valentin PARMON, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis (director), president of the Joint Scientific Council on Chemical Sciences, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SB RAS) The West-Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences founded in 1943 had four research centers (institutes) under its wing, the Chemical and Metallurgical Institute among them. Its present name is the Institute of Solid State Chemistry and Mechanochemistry, and it is among eleven active chemical research centers of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SB RAS). Most of them date back to 1957 - 1958. However, new challenges have brought to life new research bodies as well. Thus, the International Tomography Center was set up at Novosibirsk Akademgorodok about twenty years ago; and closer to our days, in 2001, the Institute of Chemical and Energetic Technologies was established in the town of Biysk, Altai Territory. Six research centers are located directly at Novosibirsk Akademgorodok (Academic Township). These are the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Nikolayev Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Vorozhtsov Institute of Organic Chemistry, the Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion as well as the Institute of Solid State Chemistry and Mechanochemistry, and the International Tomography Center. The other five are working elsewhere in Siberia - in Tomsk (Institute of Oil Chemistry), Krasnoyarsk (Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Technology), Omsk (Institute for Problems of Hydrocarbons Processing), Irkutsk (Favorsky Institute of Chemistry) and at Biysk (the Institute of Chemical and Energetic Technologies, the youngest). These centers are different in scale: while the staff of the Institute of Catalysis is nearly 1,000 (the largest chemical research center east of the Urals), the International Tomography Center has but about 80 on its staff. All told SB RAS employs 3,300 chemists and people of related specialities, with 1,360 research s ... Read more