Sofia was forced to marry so that she could go abroad to study. Her father would not allow her to leave home to study at a university, and women in Russia could not live apart from their families without the written permission of their father or husband. At the age of eighteen, she entered a nominal marriage with Vladimir Kovalevski, a young palaeontologist.

In 1869 Sofia travelled to Heidelberg to study mathematics and the natural sciences, only to discover that women could not matriculate at the university. Eventually she persuaded the university authorities to allow her to attend lectures unofficially, provided that she obtain the permission of each of her lecturers. Professors considered her a gifted student and spoke about her as an extraordinary phenomenon .

By the spring of 1874, Kovalevskaya had completed three papers, each of these worthy of a doctorate. The three papers were on Partial differential equations, Abelian integrals and Saturn's Rings.

In 1882 she began work on the refraction of light. She began to lecture there in early 1884, was appointed to a five year extraordinary professorship in June of that year, and in June 1889 became the first woman since the physicist Laura Bassi and Maria Gaetana Agnesi to hold a chair at a European university.

Although the Tsarist government had repeatedly refused her a university position in her own country, the rules at the Imperial Academy were changed to allow the election of a woman.

Sonya Kovalevsky has been described as the brightest star among all female mathematicians analysis is a permanent monument to her greatness. The Cauchy-Kovalevsky Theorem is at the foundation of most graduate courses in partial differential equations.

Her novel The Sisters Rajevski (based upon her own childhood) is a superb account of life among the intellectuals at a crucial period in Russian history.

In early 1891, at the height of her mathematical powers and reputation, Kovalevskaya died of influenza complicated by pneumonia.

Nikolai Basov

Nikolai Basov (1922 - 2001) is a Russian physicist whose pioneering work led to the invention of the laser.

After four years of military service during the Second World War, Basov studied physics at the Moscow Institute of Physical Engineers.

In 1948 he moved to the Lebedev Physical Institute, also in Moscow, where he worked under the supervision of Prokhorov. While the pair were searching for a technique to amplify microwave signals in spectroscopic experiments, they hit upon the idea of using a gas-filled cavity with reflectors at either end, in which the microwave beam would be intensified. Their discovery that this method produced microwaves with an extremely narrow range of frequencies led to the construction of a 'maser' - microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation - and, after further refinements, the laser. Working in the US, Townes simultaneously made the same breakthrough.

Basov later became a professor in the department of solid-state physics at the Moscow Institute of Physical Engineers. He was also appointed as vice-director of at the P N Lebedev Physical Institute in 1958, where he became director in 1973. He achieved further recognition in Soviet political life, serving in the Presidium from 1982 until 1989. Basov was a head of the laboratory of quantum radiophysics at the Lebedev institute at the time of his death at the age of 78.

Ivan Pavlov

Academician Ivan Pavlov (1854 - 1929) is the first Russian Nobel Prize winner in the Theoretical Medicine

He developed investigations in the field of physiology and pathology of the human and animal higher nervous activity, cortico-visceral interrelations, neurogenetics, evolutionary and comparative physiology. Studies on physiology of the sensory and visceral systems were developed intensively. An important aspect of the performed investigations was analysis of the regulatory effect of the nervous system upon the organism functional systems and processes of their autoregulation.

On 12th of March 1896 Popov together with Ribkin demonstrated wireless transmission of Morse signals from one university building to another that was 200 meters far from the first one. It was the first sensible transmission of text in the world. In spring of 1897 Popov conducted some experiments on the ships and was able to transmit information to a ship that was as far as 640 meters from Popov. He was increasing the distance of transmission day by day.

In 1897 he also discovered that all metal objects in the way of a radio wave could change the wave direction, or in other words could reflect it. It was the start of another useful invention called later radio-location. Imperfection of equipment at that time did not allow to put the observation into use until 40 years later when the first radio-radar was built. Others have laid claims that they discovered this phenomena of wave reflection, but it should be remembered that the invention was actually made by Popov.