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- WORLD, Page 47World NotesSOVIET UNIONProbing the Key to Genius
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- Just what made Andrei Sakharov tick? The Soviet Academy of
- Sciences' Brain Institute intends to find out. The mind that
- helped create the U.S.S.R.'s hydrogen bomb and spearheaded the
- Soviet dissident movement now lies cut into "blocks" and
- preserved in paraffin, awaiting examination by the institute's
- scientists.
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- The organization was founded in 1926 to study the gray
- matter of Lenin, and according to director Oleg Adrianov, it
- has since probed "many, many tens of brains," including those
- of Joseph Stalin and writer Maxim Gorky. The results of
- specific studies are classified.
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- Adrianov hopes the postmortem on Sakharov will shed light
- on the relationship between brain construction and scientific
- genius. But the Brain Institute is not especially interested
- in what made Sakharov the great dissident he was. Says
- Adrianov: "A political activist can be anybody, but not anybody
- can be a great scientist."
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