Dear Mr. Premier-Minister,
I was extremely surprised to learn about the developing events: the catastrophic budget cuts of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the planned transfer of the Academic institutes to Universities or under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Education and Science. The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with less than 20% of the researchers of the country is responsible for 60% of the research results.
In post-Soviet space in the former Soviet republics: Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia and several other countries, such reforms have been conducted. As a result, in Lithuania there is no longer semiconductor physics that had international recognition, in Georgia there is no more the world-famous school of mathematics, Estonia lost a worldwide recognized physics of luminescence. However, today in difficult conditions, successfully work academic institutions in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
To destroy is not the same - as to build - it is easy to destroy science, and it will take many years to revive it.
For decades I have been successfully collaborating with scientists from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in solid state physics, optoelectronics and material science.
I think that you are announcing a war to science with the planned reforms, but without science in the modern world a normal country cannot live and develop.
Stop! Save the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences!
Yours sincerely,
Zhores Alferov
Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nobel laureate,
foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, "Marin Drinov" Medal of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Plovdiv.