United Institute for Nuclear Research

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Institute headquarters (2015)

The United Institute for Nuclear Research ( Russian Объединённый институт ядерных исследований (ОИЯИ) , English Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR)) is the largest research center for nuclear and particle physics in Russia . It is internationally oriented and located in Dubna near Moscow .

history

The institute was founded in 1956 to maintain a common center for nuclear and particle physics for the socialist countries as a counterpart to the founding of CERN in the west. The member states that participated in the institute included the Soviet Union, Bulgaria , Hungary , Vietnam , North Korea , Cuba , Mongolia , Poland , Romania , Czechoslovakia , the GDR and, at times, China . After the collapse of the Soviet Union , 17 countries were members besides Russia: Azerbaijan , Armenia , Belarus , Georgia , Kazakhstan , Moldova , Ukraine , Uzbekistan , Vietnam, the Czech Republic , Slovakia , Bulgaria , Cuba, North Korea, Mongolia , Poland , Romania. There is cooperation with 712 institutes from 57 countries, including institutes in Germany and the USA , and cooperation agreements have been concluded at government level with Egypt , Germany, Hungary , Italy , Serbia and South Africa .

In addition to the director and representatives of the institute, the top management council (scholars' council) consisted of three representatives from each member country. In the early years, the institute also served to train nuclear physicists in the member states, with an orientation towards the exclusively peaceful use of nuclear energy being laid down in the statutes.

After the upheaval in the Soviet Union in 1990, the director and laboratory manager were elected for five years, efforts were made to fill the positions regardless of the countries of origin and based on scientific qualifications, and English was introduced as a second official language alongside Russian.

In 1957, the institute's Synchrophasotron particle accelerator went into operation. As its successor, the Nuclotron went into operation in 1992 . In Dubna worked among other scientists like Bruno Pontecorvo , Nikolay Bogolyubov , Gersh Budker , Vladimir Veksler , Georgy Flyorov (Flerov), Yakov Abramovich Smorodinski , Vadim Georgievich Soloviev , Semyon Solomonovich Gerschtein , Ilya Frank , Wilen Mitrofanovich Strutinski , Vitaly Iosifovich Goldanski , Václav Votruba , Wang Ganchang and from Germany among others Heinz Barwich , Klaus Hennig , Sigurd Hofmann , Heinz Pose and Christian Spiering . Karl Lanius was vice director of the institute from 1973 to 1976.

In addition to the Nuclotron, there are the cyclotrons U-400 and U-400M for experiments in the synthesis of heavy and exotic nuclei, the IBR-2 reactor for the generation of pulsed neutron beams, which has been in operation since 1984, and for investigations in nuclear physics and for neutron scattering in the Solid-state physics is used, and a proton accelerator Phasotron from the Institute for Nuclear Problems, which is used in addition to physical research for cancer therapy.

The institute is known for discovering the following elements of the periodic table : Rutherfordium (1964), Dubnium (1967), Seaborgium (1974), Flerovium ( Island of Stability , 1999), Livermorium (2001), Nihonium (2004), Moscovium (2004 ), Oganesson (2006) and most recently Tenness (2010). There were also controversies about the naming of elements . These discoveries were made at the Flerow Laboratory for Nuclear Reactions (FLNR) at JINR, where Juri Zolakowitsch Oganesjan is a senior scientist.

While the institute still had 7,000 employees at the end of the 1980s, this was greatly reduced after the fall of the Wall in the 1990s and the institute had to struggle with financial problems. Today (2011) 5000 employees work there, including 1200 scientists and 2000 engineers.

There are seven institutes. The oldest is the Institute for Nuclear Problems, which was founded in 1947 and operated a 560 MeV synchrocyclotron, which then moved with the institute to Dubna.

The JINR has awarded the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize for elementary particle physics since 1995 and the Flerov Prize for nuclear physics since 1993 .

Directors of the institute

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ For example, the former CERN director Herwig Schopper was on the council from 1993 to 2002
  2. ^ Phasotron in Dubna
  3. ↑ 2010, ref. in phys. Rev. Lett. 194.142502

Coordinates: 56 ° 44 ′ 47 "  N , 37 ° 11 ′ 22"  E