Russia has never had a great image in the United States. Long before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, the biggest country in the world was notorious in the public consciousness for controlling the Soviet Union during the Cold War, spreading Communism after the Bolshevik Revolution and even purportedly throwing its weight behind Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Yet if not for Russian scientific genius, Americans — and the rest of the human race — would live in a very different world, and certainly a far less interesting one.
