Armenia: A Regional Science and Technology Center in the Caucasus?

Abstract

Armenia was the “Silicon Valley” of the Soviet Union, producing computers for all the other republics of the USSR and home to thriving advanced institutes in many of the sciences, including physics, chemistry, biology, astrophysics, and computational science, among many others. Armenia (Yerevan Physics Institute [Yerphi]) had the largest electron accelerator in the USSR starting operations in 1967, a machine that was competitive with electron accelerators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany, Daresbury in the United Kingdom, and eventually with the higher-energy electron machines at Universities of Cornell and Stanford in the United States. A map of Armenia is shown in Figure 1. In 1991, Artsakh and the Nagorno-Karapagh region (marked as Azerbaijan in this map) held a referendum of its majority Armenian population and declared its independence from the Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR)–created region of Azerbaijan. Shortly afterward, the population of Armenia also declared its independence and established the autonomous republic of Armenia. The disputed region of Artsakh and Nagorno-Karapagh was the issue and the focus of the attacks of Azerbaijan aided by Turkey and over 20 foreign mercenary groups in the 44-day war of 2020. The separation of Armenia from the Soviet Socialist Republics led to a scientific and economic isolation (at least temporarily) with canceled orders for computers, no access to scientific literature, no funding for scientific instrumentation, and the near collapse of many advanced institutes, including those of the National Science Academies. There was a huge exodus of scientists that could no longer be employed/paid/supported to carry out research in Armenia. The Yerphi, the largest science institute in Armenia, employed up to 4,000 scientists, engineers, and support staff. That number is now reduced to just under 400. Even today, Armenia has the largest number of physicists per capita of any nation in the world—significantly larger than the Russian Federation, China, and the United States. In 2009, an international group of experts (InComEx from the Russian Federation, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, and the United States were invited by the government of Armenia to review/assess/advise Armenia regarding the future of Yerphi under the chairmanship of Prof. Dr. Yuri Oganessian who was then the scientific leader at the Flerov Laboratory in Dubna (Russian Federation). The advice of the international committee of experts resulted in the present-day reality of the conversion of YPIO into the A. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory of Armenia (AANL). Yerphi was founded in 1943, and it is now named for its founders, Artyom Alikanyan and his brother Abraham Alikhanov. Alikhanov soon afterward went on to Moscow and with Igor Kurchatov founded the prestigious Kurchatov Institute for Nuclear Energy. The vision of the AANL laboratory is to remain a center of excellence in the region by continuing research in highenergy physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, cosmology, and computation while simultaneously focusing on a broad range of applications of science that can impact the economy, health, and wealth of the people of Armenia with new innovations and technologies. New technologies and innovations are the basis for growing wealth and increasing the human well-being index. Special emphasis was paid to nuclear medicine with the implementation of nuclear medicine in Armenia in 2020 by scientists of AANL. Today, AANL is still the most impactful scientific laboratory in