The Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences, also known as FIAN or the Lebedev Institute, is the largest physics research establishment in the Soviet Union, employing 1000 scientists and 2000 other staff. When we recently visited Moscow, Nikolai G. Basov, who shared the Nobel Prize for discovery of the laser, gave us a tour of the quantum‐electronics laboratory. His laboratory is famous for its diversity of research and the talent of its physicists.