History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back ACADEMICIAN BUDKER: «…TO STIR UP MINDS AND CHAIRS» I.A. Krayneva The establishment of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1957 was an event of epochal dimension. It resulted in an essential growth of the scientific and cultural level of Russia’s eastern regions. Dozens of research institutes sprang up owing to the landing of teams that had formed within the USSR Academy of Sciences on large projects, like the Atomic project. One of those teams developed into the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Siberian Branch, USSR AS. Its cradle was the Laboratory of New Acceleration Methods from the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. The paper deals with the academic and social life of the laboratory’s head G.I. Budker (1918–1977), one of the brightest representatives of the cohort of the founding fathers of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok. He succeeded not only in the forming of a highly competent team of theoretical physicists, who became world famous, but also in promoting the institute’s economic independence although it opposed the strategy of a balanced development of the Novosibirsk Scientifi c Center, supported by its Chairman, Academician M.A. Lavrentiev. The Nuclear Physics Institute, now named after its first director Academician Budker, remains the largest and one of the most productive research institutes of the Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, and is expected to play a major role in the revival of science in Siberia in the new millennium. Keywords: history of science, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, colliding electron beams, academician Budker. DOI: 10.25791/intstg.3.2021.1260 Pp. 20-31.