Sergei Mikhailovich Polikanow

Sergei Michailowitsch Polikanow ( Russian Сергей Михайлович Поликанов , English transcription Sergei Michailovich Polikanov; born September 14, 1926 in Moscow , † September 2, 1994 in Darmstadt ) was a Russian nuclear physicist.

Polikanow graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1950. He was a student of Lev Landau and Igor Tamm in Moscow . Then he was at the Institute for Atomic Energy and from 1957 at the JINR in Dubna .

Polikanow is one of the discoverers of the spontaneous splitting of isomers when he noticed spontaneous splitting in 1962 after bombarding uranium-238 with heavy ions. It was later found to be the spontaneous cleavage of an excited state (isomer) of americium 242.

In Dubna he was involved in the synthesis of the elements with atomic numbers 102 ( Nobelium around 1957) and 103 ( Lawrencium ) (in the group of Flerow ) and studied the phenomena of nuclear fission under the action of negatively charged muons (due to the higher mass of the muon allow a closer bond in molecules). He wanted to do a longer stay at CERN . Problems with this and his connection with dissidents around Andrei Sakharov led to his expulsion and his break with the Soviet Union in 1978. He returned all of his medals. First he was at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen from 1978 to 1980 and at CERN from 1980 to 1982. From 1982 he was at GSI Darmstadt . He received an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg and was awarded an honorary doctorate in Uppsala in 1988 .

He is a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1974). In 1967 he received the Lenin Prize and he received the Order of Lenin. In 1978 he received the Tom W. Bonner Prize for Nuclear Physics .

Web links

Entry in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Obituary at CERN by Armbruster, Specht (PDF; 108 kB)

Individual evidence

↑ The questions of priority are notoriously controversial in the synthesis of elements of high atomic number, the discovery is also claimed for itself by American groups

personal data
SURNAME	Polikanow, Sergei Michailowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Polikanov, Sergei; Polikanov, Sergei Michailovich; Поликанов, Сергей Михайлович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	September 14, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH	Moscow
DATE OF DEATH	2nd September 1994
Place of death	Darmstadt

[1] The questions of priority are notoriously controversial in the synthesis of elements of high atomic number, the discovery is also claimed for itself by American groups