Russian Academy awards gold medals

The presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2004 Bogoliubov Gold Medal to Dmitry Shirkov, honorary director of the Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna. The presidium has also awarded the 2004 Skobeltsin Gold Medal to Georgi Zatsepin of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow.

Gold medal winners

Shirkov was a student of Nikolai N Bogoliubov, and in the 1950s they co-wrote papers on quantum-field theory (QFT), superconductivity theory and the renormalization group method (CERN Courier September 2001 p19). Their book Introduction to the Theory of Quantized Fields has served for many years in the final part of education in modern theoretical physics.

Shirkov transferred the formalism of the Bogoliubov renormalization group from QFT to mathematical physics, introducing the notion of "functional self-similarity" in the early 1980s. More recently, he developed an algorithm to apply it to various mathematical problems, work for which he received the medal from the Russian Academy.

Zatsepin received the Skobeltzin medal for his outstanding contribution to cosmic-ray physics, elementary-particle physics and astrophysics; and for the creation of a first-class scientific school on cosmic-ray physics, neutrino physics and astrophysics. He is a pioneer of many aspects of cosmic-ray physics and neutrino astrophysics, and is well known for the prediction of the cosmic-ray cut-off - the Greisen-Kuzmin-Zatsepin effect.

He helped to create the Baksan Neutrino Observatory and the gallium-germanium neutrino telescope, and participates in the Russia-US solar-neutrino experiment, SAGE.