Eduard Kolchinskii

The rich tradition of history of science in St. Petersburg includes the works of G. F. Miller, P. S. Pallas, P. S. Bilyarsky, A. A. Kunik, P. P. Pekarsky, M. I. Sukhomlinov and others. After 1917, perceiving a public interest in research on the history of ideas, the Academy of Sciences founded several scientific institutions in the field: the «Russian Science» commission (1917), the commission on the history of knowledge (1921), the Institute for the History of Science and Technology (1932), and the commis sion on the history of the Academy of Sciences (1938). They all had rather short lives under the conditions of a totalitarian regime. In September 1953 the Academy of Sciences created the Leningrad branch of the Institute for History of Science and Technology, which continued to exist until now. Five decades of work by St. Petersburg historians of science have enriched our knowledge with discoveries and analyses of many important archival documents, rehabilitation of once forgot ten names, and revelations about the St. Petersburg academic community’s contri butions to world culture.