ABSTRACT
This chapter presents areas of physical chemistry pursued intensively at the Institute of Cybernetics include biophysics and theoretical gas chromatography on chemistry. It illustrates not only what can be and has been done but also how little one can learn about progress in science by studying only statistics, organization charts, and formal names of institutes or even research groups. The chapter presents necessarily incomplete, nevertheless indicates that a very high level of basic scientific research and supportive technological-developmental research exists in the Estonian Soviet socialist republics. The postwar University of Tartu has built on its earlier scientific traditions. The Estonian Academy of Sciences had been established in 1938 as a central body for scientific planning, coordination, and interchange. The oil-shale industry is an important component of Estonia's economy. Another aspect of the broad field of physical organic chemistry, the determination of molecular structure, is pursued at the Institute of Cybernetics.
