Business News Russia | Page 33

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5 Russian rubles banknote of 1997, with Millennium of Russia monument and St. Sophia Cathedral on the obverse, while Novgorod Kremlin on the reverse.

the knapsack parachute, while Evgeniy Chertovsky introduced the pressure suit. Pavel Yablochkov and Alexander Lodygin were pioneers of electric street lighting, and Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky invented the three-phase electric power system, widely used today.

Many famous Russian scientists and inventors were émigrés, like Igor Sikorsky, credited with invention of first helicopters, and Vladimir Zworykin, often called the father of TV, chemist Ilya Prigogine, noted for his work on dissipative structures and complex systems (1977 Nobel Prize for Chemistry), economists Simon Kuznets (1971 Nobel Prize) and Wassily Leontief (1973 Nobel Prize), physicist Georgiy Gamov (an author of the Big Bang theory) and social scientist Pitirim Sorokin who played an important role in development of sociology in the USA. Many foreigners worked in Russia for a long time, like Leonard Euler and Alfred Nobel.

The greatest Russian successes are in the field of space technology and space exploration. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was the father of theoretical austronautics. His works had inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergey Korolyov, Valentin Glushko and many others that contributed to the success of the Soviet space program at early stages of the Space Race and beyond.

In 1957 the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched; in 1961 on 12 April the first human trip into space was successfully made by Yury Gagarin; and many other Soviet and Russian space exploration records ensued, including the first spacewalk

performed by Alexey Leonov, the first space exploration rover Lunokhod-1 and the first space station Salyut 1. Nowadays Russia is the largest satellite launcher and the only provider of transport for space tourism services.

Other technologies, where Russia historically leads, include nuclear technology, aircraft production and arms industry.

The creation of the first nuclear power plant along with the first nuclear reactors for submarines and surface ships was directed by Igor Kurchatov. NS Lenin was the world's first nuclear powered surface ship as well as the first nuclear powered civilian vessel, and NS Arktika became the first surface ship to reach the North Pole.

The history of the Russian aircraft eingineering originated from a pioneer of aviation Alexander Mozhaysky who made