Leonid Maksimovich Brekhovskikh

Born Apr. 23 (May 6), 1917, in the village of Strunkino, Arkhangel’sk Province. Soviet physicist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968; corresponding member, 1953) and academician-secretary of the Division of Oceanography, Atmospheric Physics, and Geography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (since 1969). Member of the CPSU since 1950.

Brekhovskikh graduated from the University of Perm’ in 1939 and became a professor at Moscow State University in 1953. He was director of the Acoustics Institute from 1954 to 1964 and head of a department after 1964. His early works were devoted to the scattering of X rays in crystals and liquids. In 1942 he began working in the fields of acoustics and wave propagation. He studied the propagation of sound and electromagnetic waves in heterogeneous media. He developed the theory of wave fields from point sources in stratified media and, in particular, produced a complete theory for the so-called lateral waves that play an important role in seismological surveys. Brekhovskikh discovered the extralong-range propagation of sound in the sea (jointly with L. D. Rozenberg, 1946). He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1951 and has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.