History of science: 14th Congress of the Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg

On December 11 - 14 2010 St. Petersburg is hosting 14th Congress of the Russian Geographical Society (RGO), timed to 165th foundation anniversary of the organization.

In his address at the opening ceremony of the Congress, V.V. Putin, the Chairman of the RGO Board of Trustees, underscored that the top priority in the organization’s work would become projects aimed at children and the youth. He also came up with an initiative to choose interesting itineraries within the framework of implementation of the Federal target program on tourism development.

He also believes that RGO should promote financial backing to promising projects, including new forms of incentive, the Society’s prize as well. In March 2011 the RGO Board of Trustees will provide grants to new projects.

Necessary assistance in all initiatives undertaken by the society will be rendered by the RGO’s media council.

The Head of the Government also pointed out that he had signed a resolution on foundation of a special organization, assigned to the development of a new national project park “Russian Arctic”.

Before giving a speech at the Congress the Prime Minister visited the society’s scientific library, which had been recently renovated. During the revamping were restored original interiors, while library’s specialists received modern equipment. A case in point, they are now able to digitize unique documents with a high productivity – 500 pages per hour. After being digitized documents are codified for creation of an electronic resource.

Putin was shown unique editions, among them, for example, a life-time edition of the Russian scholar Mikhail Lomonosov, his works based on scientific explanation of possibility of the Arctic Sea Route navigation. The scholar himself called his work “Possibilities of passage through the Siberian Ocean”.

On December 12 within the framework of the Congress was opened the All-Russian Scientific forum which brought together over 150 delegates and forum’s guests from 74 regional branches of the society. Participants will hear over 250 reports which will turn the spotlight on urgent issues related to research work, plans and prospects of development of the Russian Geographical Society and geographical science as a whole.