The Institute of Forest of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences is the first academic institution of a forest profile in Russia. It was founded in 1944 in Moscow by an outstanding native biologist academician Vladimir Nikolayevich Sukachev. The institute was named after him in 1967. In 1959 the Institute was assigned to the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and transferred to Krasnoyarsk. History In various years the Institute was headed by academicians V.N.Sukachev (1944-1959), A.B.Zhukov (1959-1977), and A.S.Isayev (1977-1988). Since 1994 the Institute has been headed by academician Y.A.Vaganov. The Institute of Forest is the largest forest-biologic institution in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Its staff consists of 170 scientific researchers, 1 academician, 33 doctors and 95 candidates of sciences including. Among them there are 3 Honoured Scientists of the Russian Federation and 4 Honoured Foresters of the Russian Federation. More than 60 people take a Ph.D. course simultaneously in a number of forest specialties: forest science, forestry, forest management, forest taxation, sylvicultures, forest pyrology, genetics and selection, ecology, botany, forest soil science, entomology, microbiology, physiology and biochemistry of wood plants, and bioinformatics. From 1947 to 2003 at the Institute 140 prominent native foresters have defended their doctor’s theses. A part of them were then elected members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1947 the Institute has been a collective member of the International Union of Forest Research Institutions, and since 1991 it has entered the International Association of Boreal Forest Researchers. The library of the Institute is a depository of scientific literature on the forest themes for the regions of Siberia and Far East. It makes up more than 150 units of storage. The readers of the library (550 people) are not only employees of the Institute but also lecturers, Ph.D. students, and university students. Academics The structure of the Institute (4 departments, 10 laboratories and a branch in Novosibirsk) provides development of fundamental and applied research in a wide range: biospherical role, ecologic functions and biodiversity of forest ecosystems, monitoring of their condition, and rational use of forest resources. The scientific schools formed at the Institute: taiga forestry and productivity of forests, permafrost forestry, taxation and forest exploitation, forest morphology, cartography, aerospace information usage, forest genetics and selection, pyrology, zoology, microbiology, physiology and biochemistry of wood plants, dendrology and dendroclimatology and other spheres of forest biological science are