In June 2023 the vice-president of Kyrgyzstan's National Academy of Sciences told parliament that the lowest salary at the Academy was 7,000 som a month and the average was 12,000 — around $135 at the time. He also named the oldest working scientist there, Mambet Mamakaev, aged 95, and noted that the youngest academician was around 55.
Those three numbers describe an institution more precisely than any amount of prose. A research academy where the average wage is below a garment worker's peak-season pay, and where nobody under 55 has made it to the top rank, is not renewing itself.
This is about Kyrgyz science: the institution, the people in it who genuinely changed things, and the research that is still world-class. There is more of that last category than you would expect.
The Academy, in numbers
The Academy traces to 1943, when the Kyrgyz Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences was established, and was reconstituted by government decree in December 1993 as the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic.
| Research institutes | 20 |
| Staff | about 1,810 |
| Academicians | 45 per the InterAcademy Partnership; 39 per a 2023 parliamentary report |
| Corresponding members | 58, or 51 in the 2023 report |
| Annual budget | 499 million som, mostly salaries and utilities |
The two counts of academicians disagree because they are from different dates, and I could not find a single current annual report reconciling them. Either way the budget figure is the one that matters: roughly $5.7 million a year for twenty institutes, of which most goes on wages and heating.
The buildings are along Chuy Avenue in Bishkek, and they are worth looking at if you are walking that stretch — Institute of Biology, Institute of Biotechnology, Institute of Chemistry and Phytotechnology, the Academy's own presidium. Soviet institutional architecture, still doing the job it was built for on a fraction of the money.
Tynystanov: the man who wrote the alphabet and was shot for it
Kasym Tynystanov, 10 September 1901 to 6 November 1938, is the name to know.
He was a linguist, poet and politician, and he built the Kyrgyz Latin alphabet — work running from 1921 to 1926, finalised in 1924 and formally approved in 1927. He sat on the USSR's central committee for adapting Turkic languages to Latin script. Before independence and before the Academy, he is the person who decided how the Kyrgyz language would be written down.
He was arrested in 1937 on fabricated charges of nationalism and executed on 6 November 1938, one of 138 Kyrgyz intellectuals shot by the NKVD at Chong-Tash near Bishkek — two bullets to the back of the skull, hands bound. The dead included Isenali Arabayev, who had created the first Kyrgyz alphabet, Yusup Abdrakhmanov, and Torekul Aitmatov, father of the writer Chingiz Aitmatov.
The bodies were found and identified 53 years later. A public funeral was held on 30 August 1991, one day before Kyrgyz independence. The Ata-Beyit memorial opened at the site in 2000. UNESCO designated 2001 the Year of the Kyrgyz Scholar Kasym Tynystanov.
Read that sequence again. The republic buried the man who gave it its written alphabet the day before it became a country.
Akhunbaev, and the first heart operation in Central Asia
Isa Akhunbaev was a surgeon and academician who, on 19 May 1959, performed the first heart operation in Central Asia. The Kyrgyz State Medical Academy, which he led as rector, is named after him, and its own account says he performed almost all the first surgical operations carried out in Kyrgyzstan and trained the generation of surgeons who followed.
His daughter, Professor Nelli Akhunbaeva, became the first and so far only woman in Kyrgyzstan to perform heart surgery.
One correction to a claim I went in expecting to confirm: I could not find any source establishing that Akhunbaev was the first president of the Academy of Sciences. It is asserted in places, and I am not going to repeat it without a source. His birth year is also only inferable — a conference marking his 110th anniversary was held around 2019, putting it near 1909.
The physicist who became president
Askar Akaev, born 10 November 1944, is the strangest entry on this list.
He trained as a physicist at the Leningrad Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics, and in 1980 earned his doctorate for work on information storage in holographic structures — quantum electronics, holography and optical information processing. He became a member of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences in 1984, its vice-president in 1987, and its president in 1989.
The following year he became president of the country, and stayed until 2005.
He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and now works as chief research officer at the Prigogine Institute for Mathematical Investigations of Complex Systems at Moscow State University. Whatever one makes of his politics, and that is outside what this post is for, the trajectory from holographic data storage to head of state is not a common one.
Altitude research, which is genuinely world-class
This is the part where Kyrgyzstan is not playing catch-up.
There is an active high-altitude research station at the Tuya-Ashuu pass at 3,200 metres in the northern Tien Shan, used for human pulmonary and physiological studies. Volunteers have had lung function measured before ascent and through four-week stays at the mountain clinic there — including a comparative study of Indian and Kyrgyz subjects.
In Bishkek, the National Centre of Cardiology and Internal Medicine, named after Academician Mirrakhimov, runs a dedicated altitude-medicine, sleep-medicine and pulmonary-hypertension group, partly under a Swiss-Kyrgyz high-altitude medicine initiative, with fieldwork based at that Tuya-Ashuu station.
One of their findings is worth stating because it inverts the intuition: elevated pulmonary artery pressure in Kyrgyz people living at high altitude reflects adaptation rather than disease. If you read about altitude on this site — our altitude sickness guide covers the practical end — this is the research community behind the underlying science, and it is here because the mountains are here.
A geographic correction while we are on mountain science. The Tuyuksu glacier group has one of only two continuous glacier mass-balance records in the world going back to 1957–58, alongside Urumqi Glacier No. 1 in China. It is often mentioned in a Kyrgyz context. It is in Kazakhstan, near Almaty. The Tien Shan does not respect borders but the research station does sit on the other side of one.
What I left out, and why
Two names I had expected to include — the geologist Musa Adyshev, who directed the Institute of Geology and later led the Academy, and the botanist Ennafa Nikitina — I could only source through search summaries drawing on Wikipedia, which this site does not use. They are probably real and correctly described. I am not printing biographical claims I could not source properly, so they are out until I can.
I also could not find hard brain-drain figures: no count or percentage of scientists who have emigrated, and no system-wide average researcher age. The two ages in the parliamentary report, 95 and around 55, are anecdotes rather than a distribution. And I found no evidence of an Academy museum open to visitors, as distinct from the institute buildings themselves.
Why any of this matters to a visitor
Because the Soviet legacy in Kyrgyzstan is usually discussed as architecture and nostalgia, and the more interesting inheritance is institutional. A country of seven million has a twenty-institute academy of sciences, a medical academy named after the surgeon who opened the region's first chest, and a high-altitude physiology programme that international researchers still come to use. It also has a $5.7 million budget to run the first of those, and a written language whose author was shot in a forest outside the capital.
Both halves are the same story. Our post on Bishkek's Soviet architecture covers the buildings; this is what was supposed to happen inside them.
FAQ
When was Kyrgyzstan's Academy of Sciences founded?
It traces to 1943, when the Kyrgyz Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences was established, and was reconstituted as the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic by government decree in December 1993. It has 20 research institutes and around 1,810 staff.
How much do scientists earn in Kyrgyzstan?
Very little. In June 2023 the Academy's vice-president told parliament the lowest salary was 7,000 som a month and the average 12,000 som, roughly $135 at the time, against an Academy budget of 499 million som covering mainly salaries and utilities.
Who was Kasym Tynystanov?
The linguist who created the Kyrgyz Latin alphabet, developed between 1921 and 1926 and approved in 1927. He was arrested in 1937 and executed on 6 November 1938, one of 138 Kyrgyz intellectuals shot at Chong-Tash. His remains were identified 53 years later and reburied on 30 August 1991, the day before independence.
Who performed the first heart operation in Central Asia?
Isa Akhunbaev, on 19 May 1959. He was rector of what is now the Kyrgyz State Medical Academy, which is named after him, and his daughter Nelli Akhunbaeva became the first and only Kyrgyz woman to perform heart surgery.
Was Kyrgyzstan's first president a scientist?
Yes. Askar Akaev trained as a physicist, earned a doctorate in 1980 on information storage in holographic structures, and was president of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences from 1989 before becoming the country's president in 1990. He now researches at the Prigogine Institute at Moscow State University.
Is there high-altitude medical research in Kyrgyzstan?
Yes, and it is internationally significant. A research station at the Tuya-Ashuu pass at 3,200 m hosts human physiology studies, linked to the National Centre of Cardiology and Internal Medicine in Bishkek and a Swiss-Kyrgyz altitude medicine initiative. One finding is that raised pulmonary artery pressure in Kyrgyz highland residents reflects adaptation rather than disease.
Is the Tuyuksu glacier research station in Kyrgyzstan?
No, it is in Kazakhstan near Almaty, despite often being mentioned in a Kyrgyz context. It holds one of only two continuous glacier mass-balance records in the world dating to 1957–58, the other being Urumqi Glacier No. 1 in China.
