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Part 1 Supplementary Papers and Items |
Department of Geology, The University, Liverpool 3
AT PRESENT there are over fifty various scientific institutions in the U.S.S.R. directly concerned with isotope dating of geological formations. Some of these institutions possess vast laboratories with tens of scientists working in them and the volume of material examined there results in thousands of determinations per annum. Immediately after the last war, with the exception of the Radium Institute in Leningrad, there was not a single laboratory which carried out isotope dating. It is interesting therefore to examine the historical basis of this spectacular scientific development of the past twenty years. Furthermore it must be recognized that the Soviet effort now compares quantitatively with the total effort in advanced western countries and consequently the scope and significance of Soviet research is worthy of an assessment. Not unnaturally many of the Russian publications are not directly available to western scientists, although some of the more recent Soviet work has been published in useful, if inelegant, translations in the International Geological Reviews of the American Geological Institute. The scope of Russian work can be gleaned from the perusal of the Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR, Ser. geol., which publishes not only numerous original papers, but also summaries of the main symposia and congresses concerned with the subject of isotope chronology held both in the U.S.S.R. and elsewhere. In Great Britain in particular, it should be realized that the days of self-imposed isolation of Soviet science are now over and that Russian scientists participate widely in international bodies. For instance Afanas’yev (1965) reported
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