Card 4 10th form term2

Card 4

1. What scientific achievements do Russian people take pride in?
2. Why is M.V.Lomonosov considered to be an outstanding innovator both in humanities and sciences?
3. What is the contribution of Russian scientists in space exploration?
4. What famous scientist(s) do you admire?why?

Russia can take pride in numerous achievements and developments in many fields. Russian science, art and literature have been abundant in great names for centuries, and the country has been regarded as a great power playing an important role in the world’s history at least since the reign of Peter the Great. Russian science and technology are famous due to many  achievements such as the invention of the radio by Alexander Popov, the creation of the Periodic Table of Elements by Dmitry Mendeleev, the invention of laser by Nikolai Basov and  Alexander Prokhorov as well as many other discoveries.

Of all the famous Russian scientists, there are some whose contribution to the world science  is the most significant one. Among them is Mikhail Vasilevich Lomonosov, the founder of the Moscow University, an outstanding innovator both in the humanities and sciences. His spheres of science were chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art and philology. Among his discoveries was the atmosphere of Venus. Lomonosov was also a poet, who created the basis of the modern Russian Literary language. Lomonosov’s works mirrored all the strength and vitality of Russian science that was pushing back the frontiers of contemporary knowledge.

It’s difficult to overestimate Russia’s contribution to space exploration. The theory of space flight was created before the Second World War by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Russia can boast many firsts in space travel. Among the most important ones are launching the first man-made satellite Sputnik 1 into the Earth orbit, the first manned flight by Yuri Gagarin on board Vostok, the first woman in space(Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), the first docking between to manned craft  in the Earth orbit and exchange of crews, the first images of the Moon’s far side, the first robotic space rover Lunokhod 1, the first permanently manned space station Mir which orbited the Earth from 1986 until 2001, the first space satellite launched in 1998 from a submarine.

Russian scholars have always based their projects on original research of high intellectual standard. Although modern achievements of Russian scientists are less known to the general public, they are not less important. The scientist I admire most of all is Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, a Russian physicist and academic who contributed significantly to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics. He is an inventor of the heterotransistor and the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed optoelectronics. Without Alferov, it would not be possible to transfer all the information from satellites down to the Earth or to have so many telephone lines between cities.

Russian scholars have always based their projects on original research of high intellectual standard. The scientist I admire most of all is Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev. The list of spheres of knowledge which Mendeleyev's genius touched upon is enormous and includes chemistry, physics, earth sciences, metrology, economics, metallurgy and much else. Mendeleyev created the Periodic Table of Elements. He was the first to suggest a system of classification in which the elements are arranged in the order of increasing atomic weights. Thanks to his investigations Mendeleyev was able to predict not only the existence of a few unknown elements but their properties as well. Later the elements predicted were discovered. Time is the severest judge in science. After more than 100 years of its existence, the Periodic Law has preserved its full value and is being constantly developed with each new discovery.