Awards

Year End Award

On 26 December, at a meeting of members of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a ceremony was held to award RAS prizes named after outstanding scientists. The diplomas were awarded to the scientists by the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Academician Gennady Krasnikov. One of the winners was Head of the Department of Heavy Ion Physics of the Laboratory of High Energy Physics of JINR Professor A.I.Malakhov. The scientist was awarded the P.A.Cherenkov Prize for a range of investigations in relativistic nuclear physics carried out at JINR and foreign centres that were the basis of the physics programme of the NICA accelerator complex.

Alexander Malakhov is a famous Russian physicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Engineering, Head of the Nuclear Energy Section of the RAI, Head of the Department of Physical and Technical Systems at the Dubna University.

Milestones of scientific biography (with comments from the winner)

It is significant that the awarding of the P.A.Cherenkov Prize to me coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Laboratory and the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Nuclotron. This is a very valuable reward for me. Almost all physical facilities in the world contain Cherenkov detectors, the development of which I was also involved in. I would like to thank JINR Directorate for supporting my nomination for the prize, especially Yu.Ts.Oganessian and V.A.Matveev. I am also grateful to P.I.Zarubin, the Scientific Secretary of the Competition Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for his assistance in preparing the award documents. And of course, many thanks to the co-authors of my papers.

***

Even during my school years, I was interested in how matter and the Universe worked. In elementary school, I re-read textbooks on physics and mathematics for high school students. It was quite natural that after school I entered MEPhI. I completed my graduate internship at ITEP in Moscow and later, continued my postgraduate studies there. For me, it was a very fruitful period, since during that time (late 1960s) the accelerator in Protvino that in those times had the highest energy in the world, started to extensively operate and our group carried out research there.

***

In 1971, I received an offer from A.M.Baldin to move to Dubna. The conversation with Alexander Mikhailovich in his apartment on Lesnaya Street in Dubna that decided my fate was long. I was struck by the broad erudition of Director of LHE and his attentive, very respectful attitude.

I started working at LHE, in M.N.Khachaturian's Sector. Head of the Department at that time was I.A.Savin. I came to LHE when the construction of the FOTON facility started that at that time was designed at the highest scientific and technical level. The basis of the detection system is a 90-channel Cherenkov hodoscope, made of lead glass of the highest transparency that had a record energy resolution. I had to get involved in the development of this device.

At this time, I was lucky enough to meet Pavel Alekseevich Cherenkov that participated in international seminars on problems of high energy physics and quantum chromodynamics held in Dubna by A.M.Baldin (later, these seminars were called "Baldin's Autumn"). Pavel Alekseevich was a very interesting and erudite interlocutor. Despite his status as a Nobel winner, he was easy to talk to. In particular, we discussed the design of our multichannel Cherenkov hodoscope and he gave a number of useful advices. Then, of course, I did not imagine that I would be awarded the RAS prize named after this great scientist.

***

I completed a number of papers under the supervision of A.M.Baldin and of course, I consider him my teacher. At some point, Alexander Mikhailovich invited me to become Deputy Director of LHE. The appointment happened almost instantly. The order was signed by JINR Director V.G.Kadyshevsky on the same day. Today, as we know, it does not happen.

Since I became A.M.Baldin's Deputy, our scientific cooperation significantly strengthened and became closer. We were able to carry out several joint scientific papers in which important predictions were made about the behavior of nuclear interactions at high and ultra-high energies.

In 1997, I was elected Director of LHE and always felt the support and help of A.M.Baldin that became Scientific Leader of the Laboratory. Under him, in my opinion, very good traditions developed that we tried to continue. We still had a Directors' meeting every Friday with the participation of all Department Heads and members of Directorate. Meetings were held according to quarterly plans and minutes were taken.

Based on these protocols, on the advice of A.N.Sissakyan, I published the book "People of High Energy" that reflects the 10-year period of the Laboratory's life from 1997 to 2007, during which I was elected Director of LHE.

***

And of course, in our Laboratory, there was a tradition of not confining ourselves only within our own framework. LHE employees were among the first Dubna physicists to appear at CERN, carried out the very first experiment on the internal beam of the largest accelerator at the time in Batavia in the USA, participate in the STAR and PHENIX experiments on RHIC at BNL and in the ALICE, CMS, ATLAS experiments at the LHC and NA49/NA61 on SPS at CERN. As a result of these experiments, our collaborators, including myself, became co-authors of such major modern scientific achievements as the discovery of the Higgs boson, the jet-quenching effect and the ridge effect in nuclear interactions, the increase in the yield of strange particles in the interaction of heavy nuclei with increasing energy and a number of other results.

For further development of research in the field of relativistic nuclear physics, in 2002, a proposal was made at LHE to develop a superconducting nuclear collider based on the Nuclotron. (This proposal was published in our newspaper No. 2-3 dated 18 January, 2003 - editor's note). Thus, the future of the Laboratory is associated with the development of the NICA nuclear collider and physical research on it.

In 2007, I was elected Head of the Department of Heavy Ion Physics that unites a number of physical projects at the Nuclotron under one topic: SCAN, PHASE, BECKEREL, MARUSYA. The NA61/SHINE facility at CERN also operates successfully at SPS. All these projects are successfully implemented.

During this period, also together with G.I.Lykasov and A.A.Zaitsev, I successfully developed the approach of A.M.Baldin to study relativistic nuclear interactions in the space of four-dimensional velocities using the similarity parameter and taking into account quark-gluon dynamics. A series of papers have been published on this topic.

***

Since 2023 marks the 70th anniversary of the Laboratory, I would like to congratulate all staff members on the anniversary and wish them creative success, although times are difficult, but less difficult than those we experienced in the 1990s.

I hope that we will be able to fulfill our plans to develop the NICA collider in the near future. The first stage of the project to put the Nuclotron booster into operation has already been completed, a successful long-term session of joint operation of the booster and the Nuclotron has been carried out and a high-quality beam of xenon nuclei has been obtained. Magnetic components of the collider were designed, developed and installed in the tunnel.

I would like to wish everyone success in implementing these laboratory plans, as well as good health and personal happiness.

Evgeny MOLCHANOV
Based on the text of an interview published in the weekly "Dubna", on 14 March, 2006, No. 14