Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

History

In late 1945 and early 1946, a group of Soviet scientists, including the future Nobel Prize winner Pyotr Kapitsa, lobbied the government for the creation of a higher educational institution radically different from the type established in the Soviet system of higher education. Applicants, selected by challenging examinations and personal interviews, would be taught by and work together with, prominent scientists. Each student would follow a personalized curriculum created to match their particular areas of interest and specialization. This would later become known as the Phystech System.

In a letter to Stalin in February 1946, Kapitsa argued for the need for such a school, which he tentatively called the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, to better maintain and develop the country's defense potential. The institute would follow the principles outlined above and was supposed to be governed by a board of directors of the leading research institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences. On March 10, 1946, the government issued a decree mandating the establishment of a "College of Physics and Technology" (Russian: Высшая физико-техническая школа).

For unknown reasons, the initial plan came to a halt in the summer of 1946. The exact circumstances are not documented, but the common assumption is that Kapitsa's refusal to participate in the Soviet atomic bomb project and his disfavor with the government and communist party that followed, cast a shadow over an independent school based largely on his ideas. Instead, a new government decree was issued on November 25, 1946, establishing the new school as a Department of Physics and Technology within Moscow State University. November 25 is celebrated as the date of MIPT's founding.

Kapitsa foresaw that within a traditional educational institution, the new school would encounter bureaucratic obstacles, but even though Kapitsa's original plan to create the new school as an independent organization did not come to fruition exactly as envisioned, its most important principles survived intact. The new department enjoyed considerable autonomy within Moscow State University. Its facilities were in Dolgoprudny (the two buildings it occupied are still part of the present day campus), away from the MSU campus. It had its own independent admissions and education system, different from the one centrally mandated for all other universities. It was headed by the MSU "vice rector for special issues"—a position created specifically to shield the department from the university management.

The Phystech System

The key principles of the Phystech System, as outlined by Kapitsa in his 1946 letter arguing for the founding of MIPT:

Rigorous selection of gifted and creative young individuals.

Involving leading scientists in student education, in close contact with them in their creative environment.

An individualized approach to encourage the cultivation of students' creative drive and to avoid overloading them with unnecessary subjects and rote learning common in other schools and necessitated by mass education.

Conducting their education in an atmosphere of research and creative engineering, using the best existing laboratories in the country.

Departments

In 2016, a large-scale reform took place, and MIPT has since been divided into Phystech schools, created from the ex-faculties:

Phystech School of Radio Engineering and Computer Technology (PRCT or FRKT; Russian: Физтех-школа Радиотехники и Компьютерных Технологий, ФРКТ)

Landau Phystech School of Physics and Research (LPR or LFI; Russian: Физтех-школа Физики и Исследований им. Ландау, ЛФИ)

Phystech School of Aerospace Technology (PAST or FAСT; Russian: Физтех-школа аэрокосмических технологий, ФАКТ)

Phystech School of Electronics, Photonics and Molecular Physics (PEPM or FEFM; Russian: Физтех-школа электроники, фотоники и молекулярной физики, ФЭФМ)

Phystech School of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (PAMCS or FPMI; Russian: Физтех-школа прикладной математики и информатики, ФПМИ)

Phystech School of Biological and Medical Physics (PBMP or FBMF; Russian: Физтех-школа биологической и медицинской физики, ФБМФ)

I.V. Kurchatov Phystech School of Nature-like, Plasma and Nuclear Technologies (KST or KNT; Russian: Физтех-школа природоподобных, плазменных и ядерных технологий им. И.В. Курчатова, КНТ)

Phystech School of High-Tech Business (PHTB or FBVT; Russian: Физтех-школа бизнеса высоких технологий, ФБВТ)

Higher School of Software Engineering (HSSE or VShPI; Russian: Высшая школа программной инженерии, ВШПИ)

Despite the formation of new departments, students and teachers of the Institute often continue to use the old names of faculties. For example, LPR students are usually called "fopfs" (Russian: фопфы) in honor of the former Department of General and Applied Physics (DGAP, Russian: Факультет общей и прикладной физики, ФОПФ).

Admissions

Most students apply to MIPT immediately after graduating from high school at the age of 18. Traditionally, applicants were required to take written and oral exams in both mathematics and physics, write an essay and have an interview with the faculty. In recent years, oral exams have been eliminated, but the interview remains an important part of the selection process. The strongest performers in national physics and mathematics competitions and IMO/IPhO participants are granted admission without exams, subject only to the interview.

In accordance with the traditions of the Soviet education system, education at MIPT is free for most students. Further, students receive small scholarships (as of 2025, $70–90 for bachelor's and $140 for master's degree per month, depending on the student's performance) and rather cheap (as of 2025, $17–33 per month, depending on location and comfort) housing on campus.

Education

It normally takes six years for a student to graduate from MIPT. The curriculum of the first three years consists exclusively of compulsory courses, with emphasis on mathematics, physics and English. There are no significant curriculum differences between the departments in the first three years. A typical course load during the first and second years can be over 48 hours a week, not including homework. Classes are taught five days a week, beginning at 9:00 am or 10:45 am and continuing until 5:00 pm, 6:30 pm, or 8:00 pm. Most subjects include a combination of lectures and seminars (problem-solving study sessions in smaller groups) or laboratory experiments. Lecture attendance is optional, while seminar and lab attendance affects grades. Andre Geim, a graduate and Nobel prize winner stated, "The pressure to work and to study was so intense that it was not a rare thing for people to break and leave and some of them ended up with everything from schizophrenia to depression to suicide."

MIPT follows a semester system. Each semester includes 15 weeks of instruction, two weeks of finals and then three weeks of oral and written exams on the most important subjects covered in the preceding semester. Starting with the third year, the curriculum matches each student's area of specialization and also includes more elective courses. Most importantly, starting with the third year, students begin work at base institutes (or "base organizations," usually simply called bases). The bases are the core of the Phystech system. Most of them are research institutes, usually belonging to the Russian Academy of Sciences. At the time of enrollment, each student is assigned to a base that matches their interests. Starting with the third year, a student begins to commute to their base regularly, becoming essentially a part-time employee. During the last two years, a student spends 4–5 days a week at their base institute and only one day at MIPT.

The base organization idea is somewhat similar to an internship in that students participate in "real work." However, the similarity ends there. All base organizations also have a curriculum for visiting students and besides their work, the students are required to take those classes and pass exams. In other words, a base organization is an extension of MIPT, specializing in each particular student's area of interests. While working at the base organization, a student prepares a thesis based on their research work and presents ("defends") it before the Qualification Committee consisting of both MIPT faculty and the base organization staff. Defending the thesis is a requirement for graduation.

Base organizations

As of 2005, MIPT had 103 base organizations. The following list of institutes is far from complete:

Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies (established 1991)

Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology RAS

Gromov Flight Research Institute

Institute for Information Transmission Problems RAS

Institute for Nuclear Research RAS

Institute for Physical Problems

Institute for High Energy Physics (1963)

Institute for Problems in Mechanics RAS

Institute for Spectroscopy Russian Academy of Sciences

Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics

Institute of Biochemical Physics RAS

Institute of Molecular Genetics RAS

Institute of Numerical Mathematics RAS

Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics RAS (1956)

Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of RAS

Institute of Solid State Physics RAS

Institute of Synthetic Polymer Materials RAS

Degrees

Before 1998, students could graduate only after completing the full six-year curriculum and defending their thesis. Upon graduation, they were awarded a specialist degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics and, beginning in the early 1990s, a master's degree in Physics. Since 1998, students have been awarded a bachelor's degree diploma after four years of study and the defense of a bachelor's "qualification work" (effectively a smaller and less involved version of the master's thesis).

The full course of education at MIPT takes six years to complete, just like an American bachelor's degree followed by a master's degree. The MIPT curriculum is more extensive compared to an average American college according to the school. There is an opinion at the school that an MIPT specialist/Master's diploma may be roughly equivalent to an American PhD in physics.

Rankings

In 2020 and 2021, Times Higher Education ranked MIPT #201 in the world, in 2022 QS World University Ratings ranked it #290 in the world, in 2026 U.S. News & World Report ranked it #475 in the world, and in 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked it #501 in the world.

Traditional university rankings are often based in part on the universities' research output and prizes won by faculty.

People

Demographics

About 15% of all students are residents of Moscow and nearly the same are from Moscow region; the rest come from all over the former Soviet Union. The student population is almost exclusively male, with the female/male ratio in a department rarely exceeding 15% (seeing 2–3 women in a class of 80 is not uncommon). In 2009 more than 20% of first year students were women.

There are no reliable statistics on the careers of MIPT graduates, but most of them work in science or IT.

Notable faculty and alumni

Nobel Prize winners

Alexey Abrikosov – Soviet-Russian-American theoretical physicist whose main contributions were in the field of condensed matter physics

Sir Andrey Geim – Russian-Dutch-British discoverer of graphene, gecko tape and levitating frogs; Fellow of the Royal Society, Nobel Prize in physics, 2010

Vitaly Ginzburg – physicist, Nobel Prize 2003, co-developer of the Soviet H-bomb

Pyotr Kapitsa – discovered superfluidity, Nobel Prize 1978

Lev Landau – physicist, Nobel Prize 1962

Sir Konstantin Novoselov – Russian-British, Nobel Prize in physics for graphene research, 2010

Alexandr Prokhorov – Australian-Soviet-Russian co-inventor of the laser, Nobel Prize 1964

Andrei Sakharov – nuclear physicist, dissident, Nobel laureate, and activist for disarmament, peace, and human rights

Nikolay Semyonov – best known for his work on chain reactions, Nobel Prize 1956 in chemistry

Igor Tamm – physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, for their discovery of Cherenkov radiation

Alexander Andreev – theoretical physicist best known for explaining the eponymous Andreev reflection

Boris Babayan – pioneer of Russian supercomputers, an Intel Fellow 2004 and software architect