Zhores Alferov, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize winner in physics for 2000, expressed this opinion at a roundtable discussion held Friday and devoted to Nobel prizes and Russian Nobel Prize winners.
"For science to recover and develop in Russia, the need for it must be shown by society and the economy," the scientist said.
Mr. Alferov stressed that scientific progress is of great importance for all spheres of life in contemporary Russia, including economic modernization.
In Mr. Alferov's opinion, "the economy should stop being a "raw materials trap", but be transferred instead into the high-tech sphere."
In Zhores Alferov's words, many Russian scientists received prizes for discoveries made in the Soviet epoch, since the need for science was clearly expressed in those times.
At the same time, he stressed that the contemporary epoch has some advantages compared with the Soviet times, including, in particular, openness, freedom and possibilities for international scientific cooperation.
"It was international cooperation that saved us [Russian scientists] in the early 1990s," the Academy's vice-president said in conclusion.
