GEOPHYSICISTS IN RUSSIA

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27986, 5 June 1956, Page 10

GEOPHYSICISTS IN RUSSIA

N.Z. MATHEMATICIAN’S PRAISE “WORK EQUAL TO BEST IN OTHER COUNTRIES” (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 4. The work of the Russian geophysicists was equal to the best work in the other principal countries, said Processor K. E. Bullen, who is in Auckland on his way from America to Australia, where he is professor of applied mathematics at Sydney University. Professor Bullen is spending three days with his parents, Mr and Mrs G. S. Bullen, of Mason’s avenue, Herne Bay.

Professor Bullen spent a week in Moscow on a three months’ tour, during which he attended a meeting of the executive committee of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in Faris and of the European Seismological Commission in Vienna. He attended the executive committee’s meeting in his capacity of president of the International Association jf Seismology and Physics of the Interior of the Earth. While he was in Vienna the Russians asked him to visit Moscow at the expense of the Soviet Government.

As he had been there in 1936, he was able to make comparisons, Professor Bullen said. There was slightly more liberalism in political criticism. This did not apply only to Stalin, he said. He had also heard persons remark that the present leaders were not of the calibre of Lenin, whose equal was not likely to be seen again. “This prompted the feeling,” said Professor Bullen, “that Russia has moved slightly but significantly toward Western behaviour. I came away feeling more optimistic than when I went there. However. Russia should still be judged by her actions, but goodwill gestures should not be spurned offhand.”

Professor Bullen was impressed by the samples of geophysical work he saw. Obviously the Russians respected their scientists in a wav which New Zealand and Australia did not. both in prestige and salary, he said. He estimated that a Russian scientist was paid at least five times the salary of an unskilled workman, and that the academic man ranked second to the high-level Government servant in order of importance, with doctors and others a good distance behind