The educational center of Rosatom Academy “Mayak” will be named after academician Sakharov
The educational center of Rosatom Academy “Mayak” in Nizhny Novgorod will be named after academician Andrei Sakharov. The awarding ceremony will take place on World Science Day for Peace and Development on November 10, 2021 with the support of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom. The ceremony will be attended by Rosatom General Director Alexei Likhachev, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev and Andrei Sakharov's granddaughter Marina Sakharova-Lieberman. The assignment of the Andrei Sakharov Mayak Academy was personally agreed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was reported to “Lente.ru” in the press service of Rosatom.
It is symbolic that the Mayak Academy, located right here – in the center of Nizhny Novgorod – at the spit where the Oka and Volga merge, will receive the name of a significant figure for national science and society – Andrei Sakharov, the press service of Rosatom stressed. The Nizhny Novgorod region is, in fact, the birthplace of the Russian nuclear industry. The Russian Federal Nuclear Center is located here – the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics in Sarov, where domestic technologies were created, on which Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov worked. On the one hand, Academician Sakharov took part in the creation of the most formidable weapon in the entire history of mankind, which became the basis of the principle of global nuclear balance. On the other hand, Andrei Sakharov became a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a well-known fighter for disarmament and human rights.
After the Sakharov award ceremony, the Mayak Academy will host an international dialogue forum Science for Peace and Development under the auspices of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, dedicated to the ethics of scientific progress and the role of scientists in its understanding. Domestic and foreign scientists, experts and public figures will discuss the relevance of scientific knowledge and discoveries in the modern world and will try to determine the boundaries of the responsibility of scientists for their discoveries. The dialogue forum will take place within the framework of the Year of Science and Technology in the Russian Federation.
The event will be attended by: 2007 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and climate change expert Rae Kwon Chung, Oxford University mathematics professor Marcus du Sautoy, international expert in the fight against infectious diseases Ravina Kullar, Astronomer Royal, Cambridge University professor Sir Martin Rees and many others.
Special guests will be Alexey Likhachev, General Director of Rosatom, and Alexander Sergeev, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The event will be moderated by journalist, TV presenter and producer Sofiko Shevardnadze.
The event will be divided into two thematic blocks. In the first block, the forum participants will hold a discussion on the topic of whether modern scientific discoveries are a good or a risk for society. The dialogue will also touch upon the subject of the boundaries of the scientist's responsibility for his ideas and inventions. The second block of the forum will be devoted to the issue of ownership of scientific discoveries. The participants will also discuss what constitutes the formula for success in science today: competition or cooperation.
“Often, scientific discoveries are linked to a broader context – for example, in the military or corporate sphere, where ethical boundaries may be blurred or not taken into account at all. In this case, it becomes difficult for scientists to control in practice how the fruits of their labor are used, or to decide how and where they will be used, ”the theoretical physicist Marcelo Glazer believes.
“Climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic threaten the existence of human life on Earth. Science must come to our aid and ensure sustainable development in the future. Economics as a science should first of all engage in qualitative improvement of economic development, transforming the environmental and social value of natural and human resources into market indicators to create synergies between environmental and social sustainability and economic development, ”said Rae Kwon Chung.
The Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO supported the International Forum-Dialogue in Nizhny Novgorod, thereby giving the event a special status. The main principle of the activity of this authoritative interstate institution is to develop communication between people in order to improve knowledge about each other's life and achieve greater mutual understanding. The organizers of the discussion at the Mayak Academy hope that they will be able to bring the international community closer to solving the problems of the ethics of scientific knowledge and help make science more human-centered.
The dialogue forum will begin at 4:16 pm Moscow time in the central studio Academy “Mayak” in Nizhny Novgorod (Nizhnevolzhskaya embankment, 11). The online broadcast will be available in Russian and English.