The tourism sector is of great importance to Odessa which is currently the second most visited Ukrainian city. In 2003 this sector recorded a total revenue of 189,2 mln UAH. Other sectors of the city's economy include the banking sector; the city is home to a branch of the National Bank of Ukraine. Imexbank, one of Ukraine's largest commercial banks is based in the city. Foreign business ventrues have also thrived in the area, as since January 1, 2000, much of the city and its surrounding area has been declared a free economic zone, this has aided the foundation of foreign companies' and corporations' Ukrainian divisions and allowed them to more easily invest in the Ukrainian manufacturing and service sectors. To date a number of Japanese and Chinese companies, as well as a host of European enterprises, have invested in the development of the free economic zone, to this end private investors in the city have invested a great deal of money into the provision of quality office real estate and modern manufacturing facilities such as warehouses and plant complexes.
Scientists
A list of world known scientists lived and worked in Odessa. Among them: Illya Mechnikov (Nobel Prize in Medicine 1908), Igor Tamm (Nobel Prize in Physics 1958), Selman Waksman (Nobel Prize in Medicine 1952), Dmitri Mendeleev, Nikolay Pirogov, Ivan Sechenov, Vladimir Filatov, George Gamow, Nikolay Umov, Leonid Mandelstam, Aleksandr Lyapunov, Mark Krein, Alexander Smakula, Waldemar Haffkine and Valentin Glushko. George Gamow, the famous physicist, was born in Odessa; there, his father was a high school teacher of Russian literature; among his students, Lev Bronstein, a. k. a. Trotzkij, who speaks about him in rather unobliging terms in his autobiography
