Baikal in my life

Grachev Michael

...I have been the director of the Limnological Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences for sixteen years. There are various institutes in the Academy. The majority of them are conglomerates, confederations of laboratories. Let’s take a typical chemical institute. Each laboratory in it studies the chemistry of a certain class of compounds, under the leadership of a reputed scientist specializing in this area. The integration of the institute manifests itself in the common technical basis: instruments, analytical methods, libraries, databases. If a laboratory from such an institute is transferred to another place, there will be no great calamity, since it is practically self-reliant.

Interdisciplinary institutes are another matter. Here the laboratories have to work together to solve a common problem, employing the methods of various disciplines: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology. For example, the creation of a new catalyst, the construction of an atomic bomb, or the quest for new knowledge about the world ocean.

Not everyone knows what limnology is. It is simply the science about lakes (in Latin limnos means 'lake'). The goal of limnological institutes is to study various lakes, usually young and small ones – such are the overwhelming majority – in order to solve practical problems: how to protect a lake from pollution, raise the yield of fish, provide water utilities, etc. Our lake is the largest in the world, and our limnological institute is also the largest in the world, consisting of 340 people. But in reality our institute is a miniature oceanological institute...

More information on these and other subjects you can find in the printed version of our journal.