International Scientific Cooperation of the NAS of Ukraine and Scientific Institutions of Japan in the 1960s and 1970s: Historical and Source Science Review

Abstract

In the study, on the basis of little-known and partly unresearched archival documents, a historical reconstruction of Ukrainian-Japanese scientific cooperation in the period of the 1960s and 1970s was carried out. The research methodology consists in the application of historical and archival research, source research, chronological methods, as well as methods of analytical and synthetic processing of documents and scientific expertise. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the systematization and analysis of a vast complex of archival sources on the history of Ukrainian-Japanese scientific relations, the introduction into scientific circulation of a wide array of still unexplored archival documents, and the implementation on their basis of a complex historical reconstruction of the directions and forms of cooperation of academic institutions, industrial enterprises and individual scientists of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and Japan. Based on the analysis of archival documents and using separate scientific developments of Ukrainian scientists in the investigated problem, we conclude that scientific cooperation between Ukrainian and Japanese scientists, institutions, and institutions of higher education during the 1960s and 1970s developed dynamically and was aimed at solving important scientific issues. Cooperation in the direction of practical implementation of the results of scientific research turned out to be especially fruitful. If in the 1950s the cooperation was episodic, partly exploratory in nature with the work of both Ukrainian and Japanese scientists, then since the 1960s bilateral cooperation was actualized thanks to the implementation of joint scientific and research developments in many areas, participation in international scientific events, establishing personal ties between leading scientists of Ukraine and Japan. Joint activities in the fields of electric welding, biochemistry, physiology, geology, geophysics, mathematics, physics, astronomy, cybernetics, zoology, and social and humanitarian sciences were the most effective. The exchange of books between the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and scientific institutions and institutions of higher education in Japan also developed dynamically, in particular, the number of institutions with which the exchange of books and topics of literature was carried out expanded.