Jubilees

Mikhail Grigorievich Itkis turns 80

On 7 December, Deputy Scientific Leader of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions of JINR Professor Mikhail Grigorievich Itkis turned 80 years old.

Mikhail Grigorievich is a world-famous physicist and organizer of science. Since 1967, after graduating from Lomonosov Moscow State University, he had worked at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan where in 1974 he defended his Ph.D. thesis and in 1985 - his doctoral dissertation. His scientific interests are so closely intertwined with the research topics of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research that in 1992 he was invited to work at FLNR. In 1993, M. G. Itkis was elected Deputy Director of FLNR and in 1997, he became Director of this laboratory. From 2006 to 2020, M. G. Itkis was Vice-Director of JINR, since 2020 he has been Deputy Scientific Leader of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions.

The area of scientific interests of Mikhail Grigorievich involves fundamental research in the physics of nuclear fission and mechanisms of reactions with heavy ions. He has carried out a series of investigations on the probability of fission of pre-actinide nuclei that allowed to consider and decide the issues of the shape of nuclei in the area of extremely large deformations, the impact of the shell structure and the effects of nucleon pairing on the thermodynamic characteristics of heated nuclei, the dependence of the pair interaction constant of nucleons in a nucleus on its deformation and other investigations.

The results obtained allowed to make significant progress in understanding the nature of asymmetric fission of nuclei, the role of shell effects and fluctuation-dissipation processes in the mechanism of development of mass and energy distributions of fission fragments of cold and heated nuclei. These series of investigations have acquired a wide response at international symposiums on fission physics and have stimulated the experimental and theoretical research of similar effects in the USA, Germany, Belgium, Japan and other countries.

With the arrival of M.G.Itkis at the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, further research of the processes of nuclear fission using heavy ions at the U-400 cyclotron have been carried out and significantly expanded. For an adequate theoretical description of the dynamics of the interaction of nuclei that result in the production of superheavy systems, detailed data on the mass, energy and angular distributions of the reaction products have been required. At that time, experiments of this kind were practically impossible due to the vanishingly small cross sections for the development of composite superheavy nuclear systems. Headed by Mikhail Grigorievich, a large cycle of work has been carried out concerning the investigations of properties of the fusion-fission and quasi-fission process of superheavy composite systems with Z=106-122 near the Coulomb barrier that became an essential step in determining promising reactions for the fusion of superheavy nuclei near the "island of stability". The logical result of these investigations was the award of the State Prize of the Russian Federation to M.G.Itkis (2010).

The scientific authority of Professor M.G.Itkis is widely recognized by the international scientific community. For his great contribution to the development of science, the strengthening of international scientific and technological cooperation, Mikhail Grigorievich was awarded the Medal "50 years of Poland's participation in JINR", the Medal "Friendship" of DPRK, the Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of Bulgaria, the State Award of Mongolia, the Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" II class, Badge "For Merit to the Moscow Region" III degree. In 2009, he was elected Honorary Doctor of the Goethe University Frankfurt, in 2012 - Honorary Professor of the University of Tver, in 2016 - Honorary Professor of the University of Havana and in 2019 - Honorary Doctor of the University of Bucharest.

For fruitful work and significant contribution to the development of science, M.G.Itkis was awarded a Diploma of the Belarusian Republic, a Letter of thanks from the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and a Diploma of the Governor of the Moscow region. He is Veteran of Nuclear Energy and Industry, Honorary Worker of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation. Mikhail Grigorievich is distinguished by a high sense of responsibility, devotion to science, purposefulness and exceptional performance.

The Directorate of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, the Directorate of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions and the international staff of JINR, colleagues, friends heartily congratulate Mikhail Grigorievich Itkis on his 80th birthday, wish him good health, great success in scientific activities, inexhaustible energy, happiness and prosperity of his family.

Autograph of the celebrant

- Who do you most often remember with gratitude and, I'm not afraid of this word, with tenderness?

- Teachers. And parents first of all, my mother, especially. And I have always had wonderful friends-supervisors, in Kazakhstan - Vladimir Nikolayevich Okolovich, in Obninsk - Georgy Nikolayevich Smirenkin, he has worked there all his life. In Dubna, of course, Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian: human relations are excellent, but sometimes difficult at work, he is a tough person and I don't always agree with this ... I really love my family and they love me: children, there are many of them , after all, three, a wife, grandchildren ... This supports me very much. And in science, I have had very worthy teachers...

And now I will say this. When the anniversary approaches, you begin to remember what you did right, what was wrong ... I have never pushed anyone with my elbows in my life. I either agreed or disagreed. And this path turned out to be the most direct. I didn't fight for a place in the sun. I was involved in science very hard, from a young age I was a supervisor of a group. And it so happened that I was always offered something and I either agreed or disagreed...

Weekly "Dubna", No 47, 2012.