Today St Petersburg State University is a major Russian centre of science, education and culture of international repute. Many important universities in Europe, America, and Asia - notably Cambridge University (UK), Bologna University (Italy), the Free University of Berlin and Hamburg University (Germany), Carlton University (Canada), Amsterdam University (the Netherlands), Stockholm University (Sweden), the Municipal University of Osaka (Japan), to name but a few, - have maintained various academic contacts with the University of St. Petersburg.
The discoveries and achievements of the University professors and graduates have become part of the history of both international and Russian science and technology. Eight of them were awarded Nobel Prizes - I.Pavlov (1904) and I.Mechnikov (1908) for physiology and medicine; N.Semenov (1956) for chemistry; L.Landau (1962) and A.Prokhorov (1964) for physics; V.Leontyev (1973) and L.Kantorovich (1975) for economics, I.Brodsky (1985) for literature.
