Image by NASA

Insignia of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project

Insignia of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project

Even at the height of the Cold War, when tensions ran high between the United States and the Soviet Union, U.S. and Soviet scientists cooperated and shared technical data. Some of the first contacts between the United States and Russia occurred among scientists.

This relationship will be celebrated June 17 and 18, as the U.S. National Academies and the Russian Academy of Sciences mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the first agreement on scientific cooperation between the two organizations.

Formal scientific cooperation between the United States and Soviet governments came in 1972.

These agreements paved the way for the 1975 Apollo Soyuz Test Project, when U.S. and Soviet space capsules docked in orbit.

In the 1990s, Russians hosted American astronauts on the Mir space station. Scientists from both countries continue to cooperate on the international space station.

U.S. and Russian scientific cooperation extends far beyond space, and includes chemistry, materials science, biology, geology, seismology, earth and atmospheric sciences, physics, engineering and medicine and health science.

In one example, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture exchanged and studied samples of microbes and insects with Russian scientists.

In another example, in 1981 a U.S. historian and a Russian geophysicist devised a mathematical formula to predict U.S. presidential elections. Their formula has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote of the last seven elections, a feat unmatched by pollsters and pundits.

Who would have thought that a Russian scientist living under a communist government would provide such insights into democratic elections?