CERN Courier Alexander Mikhailovich BALDIN, outstanding Russian scientist,
Scientific Leader of the Laboratory of High Energies of the Joint Institute
for Nuclear Research, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor,
laureate of the USSR State and Lenin Prizes in the field of science and
technology, passed away on 29 April, at the age of 75.
Alexander Baldin 1926 – 2001
Baldin was born on 26 February 1926 and graduated from Moscow
Engineering Physics Institute in 1949. Baldin has contributed greatly to the
development of physics of electromagnetic hadron interactions, physics of
atomic nucleus and particle physics. He is a pioneer of relativistic nuclear
physics, the author of several scientific discoveries, the initiator of the
construction of novel superconducting accelerators of charged particles, and
the supervisor and leader of the wide scientific programme of the
accelerator complex of the JINR in Dubna, near Moscow, including the unique
superconducting Nuclotron. For 30 years he headed the JINR Laboratory of
High Energies. The achievements and contribution by A. Baldin to science are
internationally recognized and widely cited by the physics community.
The activity of Alexander Baldin was extremely wide. He was
the Chairman of the Electromagnetic Interactions Council of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, member of the Bureau of the Nuclear Physics Division of
RAS, the Chief Editor of the magazines: “Physics of Elementary Particles and
Atomic Nucleus”, “Particle and Nuclei, Letters”, member of the Editor Boards
of many scientific issues, organizer of big conferences. He permanently paid
much attention to education of young generations of scientists.
A.M. Baldin has greatly influenced the activity of the
international research Centre in Dubna and was an active initiator of
scientific activities in the JINR Member States and in many leading research
centres of the world. His demise is an irreplaceable loss for the world
science.