Oral History of Science

In 2010, the Oral History Foundation for Humanitarian Research Development was set up at the Scientific Library of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. Over the six years of its existence, the Foundation has recorded over 500 conversations about the history of science, culture, and everyday life of the past century. 150 of them were available online as of January 2016.

The creation of the archive began in 1967 owing to Viktor Duvakin who recorded oral recollections of scientists (for example, conversations with geneticist Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky or mathematician and mountain climber Boris Delone). Currently there are two processes taking place in parallel: collection of new recordings and digitization of the existing collections. On the project website conversations are organized by fields of science: math, medicine, social sciences, arts, chemistry, philosophy, geography, etc. The list of interviews that are already available online includes conversations with theater and literary critic Vadim Gaevsky, sociologist Vladimir Yadov, historian of philosophy Theodore Oizerman, biologist Elena Lubni-Gertsik, and others. The project website contains the audio (or video) recordings of conversations, their edited transcripts to facilitate the reading, as well as some visual materials: photos, letters, etc.

The archive is subject to a free license so its materials may be copied and used by all users. You can find the oral history archive here.

Credits

Сover Image: Oral History of Science