Wenedikt Petrovich Jelepov

Venedikt Petrovich Dschelepow , Russian Венедикт Петрович Джелепов , English transcription Venedikt Dzhelepov , (* 12. April 1913 in Moscow ; † 12. March 1999 in Dubna (Moscow) ) was a Russian physicist, known for research into muon nuclear fusion , the experimental nuclear - and elementary particle physics and accelerator physics.

Life

Dschelepow studied from 1932 to 1937 after an electrician apprenticeship in Leningrad at the local polytechnic. He worked at the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences under Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov . From 1937 to 1941 he was a soldier in the war against Finland. From 1941 to 1943 he was at the Joffe Institute in Leningrad and evacuated with this to Kazan. From 1943 to 1948 he was deputy head of Laboratory No. 2 under Kurchatov, where the secret Soviet research on nuclear technology took place (later the Kurchatov Institute ). From 1948 to 1956 he was deputy head of the hydraulics laboratory of the Academy of Sciences, which from 1954 was the Institute for Core Problems in Dubna. From 1956 to 1989 he was its director at what was now the United Institute for Nuclear Research , on whose council he was from 1957 to 1975. In 1947 he received his doctorate and in 1954 he completed his habilitation (Russian doctorate). In 1961 he became a professor.

He dealt with experimental nuclear and elementary particle physics and accelerator physics and was involved in the construction of the first Soviet synchrotron in Dubna. Dschelepow also dealt with medical applications of nuclear physics in cancer therapy. In the mid-1960s he found the surprising and at the time inexplicable phenomenon of an increase in fusion rates in muon-catalyzed fusion in deuterium molecules with temperature. In 1967 EA Vesman found an explanation in resonance effects with more complicated molecules. In 1979, his group confirmed a resonance effect predicted by Ponomarjow in tritium-deuterium mixtures, which significantly increased the rate of fusion. This helped to revive interest in muon-catalyzed fusion in the West too.

From 1977 to 1982 he was on the International Commission for Future Accelerators of the IUPAP.

In 1986 he received the Kurchatov Gold Medal with Leonid Ivanovich Ponomarjow (who was a leader in theoretical research on muon-catalyzed fusion in the Soviet Union). In 1951 and 1953 he received the Stalin Prize , in 1953 the Order of Lenin , in 1983 the Order of the October Revolution and twice the Order of the Red Labor Banner (1962, 1974). He was an honorary citizen of Dubna, where a memorial was erected to him and Bruno Pontecorvo in 2013 . There is also a street there named after him. In 1966 he became a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1946 he was a member of the CPSU.

From 1961 to 1988 he was on the editorial board of the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (JETP). The nuclear physicist Boris Sergeyevich Dschelepow was his older brother.

Web links

• Russian biography