Dmitrii Blokhintsev

Born Dec. 29, 1907 (Jan. 11, 1908), in Moscow. Soviet physicist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958) and Hero of Socialist Labor (1956). Member of the CPSU since 1943.

After graduating from Moscow State University in 1930, Blokhintsev began teaching there, becoming a professor in 1936. He directed the design and construction of the first atomic power plant in the world. From 1956 to 1965 he was director of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna and has been director of the institute’s Laboratory of Theoretical Physics since 1965. His first scientific studies were devoted to the quantum theory of solids, phenomena in semiconductors, acoustics of inhomogeneous moving media, and quantum mechanics. He has worked, since 1947, in the field of nuclear physics and technology (the theory of chain reactions and atomic reactors and problems of the theory of elementary particles). Blokhintsev is the author of the first handbook on quantum mechanics in the USSR. He has been a member of the Soviet Committee for the Protection of Peace since 1963, president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) since 1966, and an advisor to the Scientific Council of the Secretary General of the United Nations since 1967. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1952) and the Lenin Prize (1957), he was awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.