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In September 1998, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Ioffe Institute’s foundation, a remarkable event occurred—the construction of a new building for the Institute’s Educational Centre was completed. Already on October 2, the first scientific event—the closing session of the International Conference “Physics at the Turn of the 21st Century”— occurred in this building.
The construction of the new building was a stride toward creating and developing at the Institute completed and self-sufficient system of physics education including the higher forms of the secondary school, a specialised chair and a faculty of the leading technical universities of the city, post-graduate education, and work at research laboratories of the Ioffe Institute. The new building is intended to furnish an opportunity for different stages of this system to function beneath the same roof, thereby increasing dramatically the efficiency of their interaction.
Such an interaction of educational and research institutions has become particularly important in recent decades in connection with the wide-scale introduction into the practice of physical experiment of highly sophisticated and expensive diagnostic and technological equipment and development of research in the field of optoelectronics, solid-state electronics, plasma physics and astrophysics.
The Physico-Technical Institute has been traditionally paying particular attention to the development of its own unique system for research staff training. The jocular name of the scientific school of the Institute in the 1930s—“Ioffe’s kindergarten” reflects the wide enlistment of students and even schoolchildren in research staff of the Institute in those years. Nearly simultaneously with the foundation of the Institute, A. F. Ioffe initiated in 1919 foundation of the Physicomechanical Faculty at the Polytechnic Institute. For many years staff members of the Institute have been teaching in the Faculty, and graduates of the Faculty went to work at Institute’s research laboratories.
Further development of the educational system at the Ioffe Institute is associated with the creation in 1973 of the Chair of Optoelectronics at the Leningrad V. I. Ul’yanov (Lenin) Electrotechnical Institute (now Electrotechnical University). That was the Chair of new type—the first educational unit headed by the leading scientists of the Ioffe and operating in its research laboratories. In what follows such units are referred to as Institute-based chairs. The creation of specialised Institute-based chairs was continued in the following years, too. In 1978, Chair of Space Research was created at the Leningrad M. I. Kalinin Polytechnic Institute (now St Petersburg State Technical University). Later, three other specialised chairs (of solid state electronics, plasma physics and solid state physics) were organised at the same Institute. Since 1988, these four Ioffe Institute-based chairs have been affiliated with a new Faculty of Physics and Technology of the Polytechnic Institute. For already ten years now, the educational and research activities of the Faculty have been closely associated with the Ioffe Institute.
In the same year of 1988 the gap started to be filled between the specialised higher education and secondary school—a physico-technical school (now Lyceum “Physico-Technical school”) was organised at the Ioffe Institute. This school offers pupils of 8th–11th forms special programmes executed with participation of Institute’s scientists. Now Lyceum is the main source of top-level entrants for Institute-based Chairs. The first young scientists educated in this school and then at Institute-based Chairs joined the Institute’s research staff in 1995.
The term of education at Institute-based Chairs is 6 years. The first two and a half years provide students with background knowledge. Studies of special disciplines begin with the sixth academic semester. Special subjects are taught in the overwhelming majority of cases by leading Institute’s scientists. Students take bachelor’s degree after finishing the fourth year, and master’s degree after finishing six years of education and successfully performing a diploma work. Beginning with the third year, students take active part in solving practical problems at the best laboratories of the Ioffe Institute. Such an early adaptation of students to the methods and atmosphere of research rapidly makes them original scientists . Frequently, graduates of Institute-based Chairs back their dissertations for candidate of science degree already a year after graduation.
Thus, by the end of 1990s the development of a system of personnel training was completed. This system ensured functioning of the whole educational chain—secondary school, higher school, and postgraduate study—on the basis of the Ioffe Institute, one of the leading Russian research centres. Finishing the construction and equipping of the new building of the Institute’s Educational Centre will permit placing there the Lyceum, the Faculty of Physics and Technology and the Institute-based Chair of Optoelectronics and creating new laboratories fit to educational purposes; access to resources of the global network will be provided for everybody studying at the Centre and, in general, the educational process will be considerably improved. It is also expected that the new building will host various scientific meetings.
In the future, the Educational Centre will be used as a basis for a wide support of education in physics in schools of St Petersburg and the North-Western Region. To accomplish this objective, it is planned to widely attract financial resources of national and international educational programs.
New building and the opportunities offered
The new building of the Educational Centre is a modern construction with total area of about 13 thousand square meters, including:
