History

The Department of Radiophysics of Kazan University was organized in 1952 to provide qualified personnel for the rapidly growing radio industry of the country and scientific institutions in this area. The initiator of the creation of the new Department of Radiophysics and its first head was associate Professor, and then Professor Igor Mikhailovich Romanov. The experimental base for the Department of Radiophysics was the laboratory of oscillations at the Department of theoretical and experimental physics. The organization of the Department in its structure there were only four faculty members: the head.  Assoc. I. M. Romanov, Assoc. K. Crutches, ass. B. G. Tarasov and ass. A. N. Barinova A. N. and two employees: art. A. G. Sharagin and the mechanic V. G. Novinkov.
Since that time, theoretical and experimental research in two main scientific areas at the Department began. The first direction "Theoretical bases of design of complex radio systems" was headed by Assoc. I. M. Romanov, the second direction "Meteor propagation of radio waves" began to develop Assoc. K. V. Kostylev, who later became the founder of the Department of radio astronomy.
In 1957, the Department established a Problem radio astronomy laboratory (PRAL). The founder of the laboratory was a K. V. Kostylev, at the time associate Professor in the Department of physics. Prior to that, he was one of the first in the USSR with the help of military radar to observe and identify radar reflections from ionized traces in the atmosphere, remaining in the process of destruction, evaporation and ionization of meteor particles.
In 1960, the Department opened a graduate school in the specialty "Radiophysics and electronics". In the same years, by government decree, the staff of the Department under the supervision of I. M. Romanov began work on the construction of a new generation of special purpose radio systems together with the Electrophysical Institute. For the high level of results of this task, the staff of the Department was awarded the prize of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.