Nearly 60 years ago, the Russians were the first to put a satellite into space. They were the ones to beat in the space race. But the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about the near collapse of Russian science, and it hasn’t recovered since. “The brain drain in fields like physics and mathematics has been enormous, and if you go around to almost any physics department in a good university in the United States and look down the roster of the professors, you’ll probably find a Russian or two,”