尤里·奥加涅相1933—

经历

奥加涅相于1956年毕业于莫斯科工程物理学院，并分配到杜布纳联合原子核研究所工作，后担任该所弗廖罗夫核反应实验室主任和首席科学家。2009年，国际纯粹与应用物理学会承认了他所发现的新元素𫓧，并用弗廖罗夫核反应实验室命名（Flerovium）。2016年11月，国际纯化学和应用化学联合会宣布把奥加涅相发现的第118号元素命名为鿫。

Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian (born 14 April 1933) is a Russian and Armenian nuclear physicist who is best known as a researcher of superheavy elements. He has led the discovery of multiple chemical elements. He succeeded Georgy Flyorov as director of the Flyorov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in 1989 and is now its scientific director. The heaviest known element, oganesson, is named after him, only the second time that an element was named after a living person, and the only one who is still alive (the other is seaborgium, named for Glenn T. Seaborg, who died in 1999).

Personal life

Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR, USSR on 14 April 1933 to Armenian parents. His father, Tsolak, was from Igdir (now in Turkey), while his mother was from Armavir in what is now Russia's Krasnodar Krai. Oganessian spent his childhood in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia, where his family relocated in 1939. His father, a thermal engineer, was invited to work on the synthetic rubber plant in Yerevan. After the Eastern Front of World War II commenced, his family decided to not return to Rostov since it was occupied by Germans. Yuri attended and finished school in Yerevan. He initially wanted to become a painter.

Oganessian was married to Irina Levonovna (1932–2010), a violinist and a music teacher in Dubna, with whom he had two daughters. As of 2017, his daughters resided in the U.S.

Oganessian speaks Russian, Armenian, and English.

Career

Oganessian graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI) in 1956. He thereafter sought to join the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow, but as there were no vacancies left in Gersh Budker's team, he was instead recruited by Georgy Flyorov and began working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow.

Oganessian became director of the Flyorov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR in 1989, after Flyorov retired, and had the job until 1996, when he was named the scientific director of the Flyorov laboratory.

Discovery of superheavy chemical elements

During the 1970s, Oganessian invented the "cold fusion" method, a technique to produce transactinide elements (superheavy elements). Though they share a name, this process is unrelated to the unproven energy-producing process also named cold fusion. Oganessian's process was crucial for the discoveries of elements from 106 to 113. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, the partnership of JINR, directed by Oganessian, and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany resulted in the discovery of six chemical elements (107 to 112): bohrium, meitnerium, hassium, darmstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium.

His newer technique, termed "hot fusion" (also unrelated to nuclear fusion as an energy process), helped lead to the discovery of elements 113 to 118, completing the seventh row of the periodic table.

Recognition

Sherry Yennello has called him the "grandfather of superheavy elements". Oganessian is the author of three discoveries, a monograph, 11 inventions, and more than 300 scientific papers.

Oganessian has been considered worthy of a Nobel laureate in Chemistry, including by Alexander Sergeev, former head of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Oganesson

During early 2016, science writers and bloggers speculated that one of the superheavy elements would be named oganessium or oganesson. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) announced in November 2016 that element 118 would be named oganesson to honor Oganessian. It was first observed in 2002 at JINR, by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. Directed by Oganessian, the team included American scientists of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California. Prior to this announcement, a dozen elements had been named after people, but of those, only seaborgium was likewise named while its namesake (Glenn T. Seaborg) was alive. (The names einsteinium and fermium were suggested when their namesakes, respectively Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, were still alive; however, by the time the names became official, Einstein and Fermi had both died.) As Seaborg died in 1999, Oganessian is the only currently living namesake of an element.

Honors and awards

In 1990, Oganessian was elected Corresponding Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in 2003 a Full Member (Academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.