Committee. On August 7, 1948, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that from that point on Lamarckian inheritance, the theory that personality traits acquired during life are passed on to offspring, would be taught as "the only correct theory". Soviet scientists were forced to redact prior work, and even after this ideology, known as Lysenkoism, was demonstrated to be false, it took many years for criticism of it to become acceptable. After the 1960s, during the Khrushchev Thaw, a policy of liberalization of science was implemented. Lysenkoism was officially renounced in 1963. Soviet Nobel Prize winners in science The following Soviet scientists were recipients of a Nobel Prize. Physics 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm "for the discovery and interpretation of the Cherenkov effect" 1962 Lev Landau "for his theories about condensed matter, particularly about liquid helium superfluidity" 1964 Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the area of the quantum electronics, which led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers on the basis of the maser laser principle" 1978 Pyotr Kapitsa "for his fundamental inventions and discoveries in Cryophysics" 2001 Zhores Alferov (RU) "for the development of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed and opto-electronics" (working in the time of the USSR) 2003 Alexei Abrikosov (RU), Vitaly Ginzburg (RU) "for innovative work in the theory about superconductors" (working in the time of the USSR) Chemistry 1956 Nikolai Semenov For outstanding work on the mechanism of chemical transformation including an exhaustive analysis of the application of the chain theory to varied reactions (1934–1954) and, more significantly, to combustion processes. He proposed a theory of degenerate branching, which led to a better understanding of the phenomena associated with the induction periods of oxidation processes. National Prizes The most prestigious government prize awarded for achievements in science and technology was originally the Stalin Prize. After the death of Stalin, Stalin Prize was renamed the USSR State Prize, and the new Lenin Prize became the top award. See also Lysenkoism Science and technology in Russia Sharashka Soviet Antarctic Expedition Soviet cosmonauts Soviet explorers Soviet inventions Soviet inventors Soviet scientists Stalin and the Scientists Suppressed research in the Soviet Union References Loren Graham, What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience and Science and Technology in Russia and the Soviet Union External links Soviet Technospies from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives – Soviet