The Neutron and X-ray science has several decades history, which was written in terms of the neutron or synchrotron source generations, which, in turn, are determined by the flux for neutrons and brightness for X-rays. Several tens of the highly technological stations are built around these powerful neutron and X-ray sources for studying structure and dynamics of the hard-, soft-, and live- matter. For effective use of the third generation X-ray sources and high flux neutron sources we are forced to establish the proposal system to distribute the beam time slots among scientific community of the own country and world-wide. The user community counts thousands of scientists with a wide variety of backgrounds in physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. All of them should be familiar with the basics of Neutron and X-ray science to be able to perform experiments and to treat the data.
The training system around the neutron and x-ray sources is organized via numerous summer and winter schools with the duration from one week to a month. However, it is time to make step further and to establish Master program in “Neutron and X-ray Science” at some of the European Universities willing to really participate in the effective operation of the mega-science facilities such as neutron sources and synchrotrons.
One of the first examples was given by St-Petersburg State University with the master program “Neutron and Synchrotron Physics”. The Program is aimed at training the scientists in design, construction and operation of instruments and methods at the high-flux reactor PIK in Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute of NRC "Kurchatov Institute". The first semester of the program starts with the lectures on “Theory of interaction of neutrons and X-rays with matter”, accompanied with the course on “Basics of the neutron and X-ray detection” and one more course on “Sources of neutron and X-ray radiation”. The second and third semesters focus on the methods of diffraction, spectroscopy, small-angle scattering and reflectometry to build the basis for the interdisciplinary science developing at the large-scale facilities. The forth semester is devoted to writing the Master’s Thesis, which topic is usually in the forefront of the modern science.