Experience with Canadian/Soviet Scientific Collaboration

Abstract

Immediately after the Second world War, Stalinist policies effectively blocked any interaction between Soviet scientists and their western counterparts. By the early 1950s, however, a thaw was perceptible. Soviet scientists were again participating in large numbers in meetings organized under the International Council of Scientific Union (ICSU). In late 1954, the President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences issued a call for east-west collaboration as the most fruitful means of solving problems of global dimension and advancing science. Visits, by such prominent Canadian scientists as Dr W. Penfield, began to increase. The President of NRC, Dr Steacie, was made a foreign member of the Soviet Academy in June 1958; one of a handful of western scientists, to be given this acolade, and later led a group of Canadian scientists to Moscow in November 1959.