Misplaced Pages

Pavel Cherenkov

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Soviet physicist (1904–1990)
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (September 2024) Click for important translation instructions.
  • View a machine-translated version of the Russian article.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,036 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Черенков, Павел Алексеевич}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Pavel Cherenkov" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Pavel Cherenkov
Павел Черенков
Cherenkov in 1958
BornPavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov
(1904-07-28)July 28, 1904
Novaya Chigla, Voronezh Governorate, Russian Empire
DiedJanuary 6, 1990(1990-01-06) (aged 85)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting placeNovodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
NationalityRussian
Alma materVoronezh State University
Known forCharacterizing Cherenkov radiation
AwardsNobel Prize in Physics (1958)
Scientific career
FieldsNuclear physics
InstitutionsLebedev Physical Institute
Doctoral advisorSergey Vavilov

Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov (Russian: Па́вел Алексе́евич Черенко́в [ˈpavʲɪl ɐlʲɪkˈsʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tɕɪrʲɪnˈkof]; July 28, 1904 – January 6, 1990) was a Soviet physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1958 with Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm for the discovery of Cherenkov radiation, made in 1934.

Biography

Cherenkov was born in 1904 to Alexey Cherenkov and Mariya Cherenkova in the small village of Novaya Chigla. This town is in present-day Voronezh Oblast, Russia.

In 1928, he graduated from the Department of Physics and Mathematics of Voronezh State University. In 1930, he took a post as a senior researcher in the Lebedev Physical Institute. That same year he married Maria Putintseva, daughter of A.M. Putintsev, a Professor of Russian Literature. They had a son, Alexey, and a daughter, Yelena.

Cherenkov was promoted to section leader, and in 1940 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences. In 1953, he was confirmed as Professor of Experimental Physics. Starting in 1959, he headed the institute's photo-meson processes laboratory. He remained a professor for fourteen years. In 1970, he became Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Cherenkov died in Moscow on January 6, 1990, and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery.

Discoveries in physics

Cherenkov radiation is named for his discovery of the phenomenon; pictured here glowing is the core of the Advanced Test Reactor.

In 1934, while working under S. I. Vavilov, Cherenkov observed the emission of blue light from a bottle of water subjected to radioactive bombardment. This phenomenon, associated with charged subatomic particles moving at velocities greater than the phase velocity of light, proved to be of great importance in subsequent experimental work in nuclear physics, and for the study of cosmic rays. Eponymously, it was dubbed the Cherenkov effect, as was the Cherenkov detector, which has become a standard piece of equipment in particle-physics research for observing the existence and velocity of high-speed particles. Such a device was installed in Sputnik 3.

Pavel Cherenkov also shared in the development and construction of electron accelerators and in the investigation of photo-nuclear and photo-meson reactions.

Awards and honours

Cherenkov was awarded two Stalin Prizes, the first in 1946, sharing the honor with Vavilov, Frank and Tamm, and another in 1952. He was also awarded the USSR State Prize in 1977. In 1958, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the Cherenkov effect. He was also awarded the Soviet Union's Hero of Socialist Labour title in 1984. Cherenkov was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since 1946.

In popular culture

The novel Ghost Fleet makes the claim that many believe the Star Trek character Pavel Chekov is named after Pavel Cherenkov.

In Starship Troopers spaceships travel faster than light using Cherenkov Drive.

References

  1. Chudakov, Alexander E. (December 1992). "Obituary: Pavel Alexeyevich Cherenkov". Physics Today. 45 (12): 106–107. Bibcode:1992PhT....45l.106C. doi:10.1063/1.2809928.
  2. "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1958".
  3. Singer, P.W.; Cole, August (2015). Ghost Fleet. HarperCollins. p. 21. ISBN 9780544145979 – via Google Books.

External links

Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physics
1901–1925
1926–1950
1951–1975
1976–2000
2001–
present
1958 Nobel Prize laureates
Chemistry
Literature (1958)
Peace
Physics
Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize recipients
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
Categories: