Meshcheriakov, Mikhail Grigorevich

Meshcheriakov, Mikhail Grigor’evich 

Born Sept. 4 (17), 1910, in the village of Sambek, now in Rostov Oblast. Soviet physicist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953). Member of the CPSU since 1940.

Meshcheriakov graduated from Leningrad University in 1936. From 1936 to 1947 he worked at the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1947–48 he was deputy director of the Institute of Atomic Energy, and from 1948 to 1956 director of the Institute of Nuclear Problems. In 1956, Meshcheriakov began working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. He was appointed a professor at Moscow State University in 1954.

Meshcheriakov’s principal works have been on accelerators and the physics of the atomic nucleus and of elementary particles. Together with D. V. Efremov and A. L. Mints, he directed the construction of the first synchrocyclotron in the USSR operating at an energy level up to 680 MeV. His studies have led to the discovery of resonance effects in nucleon-nucleon interactions and have made it possible to establish the dependence of the spectra of π-mesons on the dimensions of the irradiated nuclei. Meshcheriakov devoted a number of works to the problem of automating physics research.

A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1951, 1953), Meshcheriakov has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.

REFERENCE

Flerov, G. [et al.]. “Mikhail Grigor’evich Meshcheriakov.” Uspekhifizicheskikh nauk, 1970, vol. 102, issue 1.