Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 14, 1990 TAG: 9005140066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
These eminent scientists are stimulating research in the United States, providing an influx of new ideas and flashes of insight.
While these scholars are here, many are shopping for jobs that would allow them to stay permanently. In this way, they hope to circumvent the stringent regulations that would hobble them if they formally tried to emigrate.
"It is not easy to live in the Soviet Union," said Victor Kac, a Soviet mathematician who emigrated 17 years ago and is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said he hears "almost every day" from scholars who want to visit the United States and from others who are here and want to stay.
Nicolai Reshetikhin, a mathematical physicist who came to Harvard University as an invited visitor a year ago and recently accepted a three-year position as an assistant professor, said, "This migration reflects the interior problems of the Soviet Union."
The Soviet Union is a world leader in mathematics and theoretical physics, and American and Soviet researchers said the visitors include scientists who are revered for their achievements.
Universities are bidding for the Soviet stars, and the less eminent are lobbying universities for jobs. Many schools say they have been flooded with applications from Soviet scientists seeking faculty positions.
"I think it's a tremendous opportunity for the United States," said Ronald L. Graham, adjunct director of research at the information sciences division at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J.
Melvyn B. Nathanson, provost at Lehman College of the City University of New York, went further, saying the Soviets, "are replenishing the mathematical juices of the United States."
Mark Ablowitz, director of the program in applied mathematics at the University of Colorado, said, "We have a real problem in interesting young Americans in pursuing scientific careers." The influx of leading Russians "helps us get through some rough periods."
Nathanson said the visiting Soviets, most of whom are Jewish, tell him that "they feel a great deal of uncertainty about the future stability of the Soviet Union. A lot of people are living or testing the waters abroad because there is great concern about ethnic rivalries, domestic violence, political instability and anti-Semitism." In addition, Nathanson said, "life is certainly better in the West."
Larry Shepp, a mathematician at AT&T Bell Laboratories, said specialists from the Soviet Union "are here passing around resumes." He said many of them, especially Jewish scientists who fear anti-Semitism in their country, "feel the Soviet Union is headed for catastrophe."
Although there are no precise data on the number of visiting Soviet mathematicians and physicists, Liza Malott, a program officer at the President's U.S.-Soviet Exchange Initiative at the U.S. Information Agency, said her office had records of 46 Soviet mathematicians and 154 physicists who have come to spend a semester or more in this country since July 1989.
"There may be more," she said. "It is hard for us to tell. We have no records or way to record if any stayed on."
Boris Malakhov, a spokesman for the Soviet Embassy in Washington, said he had "no comment on the specific situation." But he added, "In general, if it does not contradict Soviet law, it is OK."
The strategy of coming as a visitor and then staying is a way around the heavy restrictions on formal emigration from the Soviet Union. The Soviet government has traditionally granted emigration visas only to Jews, ethnic Germans and members of a few other ethnic minorities.
The opportunities for Soviet Jewish emigration have increased significantly as part of the liberalizations under President Mikhail Gorbachev.
But late last year the Bush administration set a ceiling on the number of Soviet citizens who can immigrate to the United States as refugees in the coming years, making it much more difficult for would-be emigres to settle here. In addition, there are limits to the number of people who can immigrate without being refugees.
But Soviet visitors could stay permanently if an employer filed a petition saying that the scientist had "exceptional ability in the arts or sciences," said Duke Austin, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Austin said that after an application is approved Soviet visitors usually wait an average of 16 months before they can obtain a permanent residency visa. During that wait, "they would not necessarily be required to depart," he said.
Many Americans and visiting Russians said the situation was delicate. When asked, for example, how many visitors really intended to stay, they avoided the question or hesitated and carefully chose their words.
"I do not want to send my opinion to officials in the Soviet Union," said a Soviet mathematical physicist who is staying, at least temporarily, in the United States.
Gregory Freiman, a Soviet mathematician who emigrated to Israel several years ago, became a professor at Tel Aviv University and is spending this year at Princeton University, said, "If some Soviet scientists of a good rank want to come, it is better not to stress it.
Publicizing the immigration of top scientists "can hurt the opportunities of private people and the opportunities of the United States," he added.
John R. Tucker, a program officer for the Board on Mathematical Sciences at the National Academy of Sciences, said: "It certainly could be detrimental from the point of view of U.S. policy. We don't want to be siphoning off their talent."
In the United States, said Kac, the Soviet mathematician who emigrated 17 years ago, "a talented young person could go into business, politics or become a lawyer. In Russia, science is the only kind of job in which politics is not involved. If you go into politics, you have to play by their rules."
The Soviets have not been as successful in experimental sciences, researchers said, and have not received many invitations to visit. "The technology was so much behind," Kac explained.
The new exodus began recently when the Soviet Union relaxed its long-standing restrictions on travel abroad. Because American mathematicians and theoretical physicists already knew and were in contact with many of their counterparts in the Soviet Union, the stage was set for the invitations. And because the Soviet scientists had studied English, communication was no problem.
Harvard University was among the first to invite Soviet mathematicians, said Arthur Jaffe, the chairman of the math department. So far, four of the two dozen Soviet mathematicians who have visited Harvard in the last year and a half have accepted more permanent positions in the United States, he said.
Two leading Soviet theoretical physicists who were visitors at Princeton University recently accepted tenured faculty positions there. But they say they have not formally cut their ties to the Soviet Union.
The two, Dr. Aleksandr Migdal, the director of the research laboratory in the cybernetics council at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and Dr. Aleksandr Polyakov, a leading physicist at the Landow Institute in Moscow, are both 43 and have been close friends for 30 years, Migdal said.
Migdal said he is still here on a visitor's visa. "I did not defect. Officially, from the point of view of the Academy of Sciences, I'm clean," he said.
He added that he has not yet made up his mind whether to stay permanently in the United States. "So far, I'm just waiting," he said. "Everybody hopes the Soviet Union will become a perfectly normal country. But if things break down, I could remain here indefinitely."
Even more Soviets want to come. American scientists say they are being peppered with letters and calls from Soviets asking for invitations.
"It seems like I get a letter from the Soviet Union every two or three days," said Ablowitz of the University of Colorado.
In the meantime, Soviet scientists are traveling throughout the country. "I have run across a number of very distinguished Soviet mathematicians who have come here as visitors and spend their time going around the country and looking for a job," Nathanson said.
Jobs "for the very best," are not hard to find, said Joel Libowitz, a mathematician at Rutgers University. David Gross, an elementary particle physicist at Princeton University, said the same is true for physicists. "We are bidding for the best Soviet scientists," he said. But, Libowitz added, "those who are just below the very best are having trouble."
American scientists say that they have benefited immensely from the Soviet visitors.
In physics or mathematics, Gross said, an elementary particle physicist at Princeton University, "even five extraordinary people can make a big difference."
by CNB