VEKSLER, VLADIMIR IOSIFOVICH

(b. Zhitomir, Russia, 4 March 1907; d. Moscow, U.S.S.R., 22 September 1966)

physics, engineering.

Veksler was the son of an engineer, Iosif Lvovich Veksler. After working as an apparatus assembler in a factory, Veksler graduated from the Moscow Energetics Institute, and held a post at the All-Union Electrotechnical Instiute and, later, at the Lebedev Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.

In 1954 Veksler became director of the electrophysics laboratory of the Academy of Sciences, and from 1956 he headed the high-energy laboratory of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. He was elected an associate member of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. in 1946 and a full member in 1958.

Veksler began his career with studies of cosmic rays and discovered a new type of interaction between high-energy particles and atomic nuclei. He is best known, however, for his work on the theory of the accelerator, an apparatus for artificially obtaining the charged particles of great energy that usually are necessary for investigations of the atomic nucleus.

In 1944, simultaneously with E. M. MacMillan, Veksler established the principle of phase stability of accelerated particles. This discovery, which is applied to all modern accelerators, proved to be a turning point in nuclear physics and in the physics of elementary particles. The largest Soviet accelerators were planned and constructed under Veksler’s direction. For his fundamental investigations regarding accelerators he received the Lenin and State prizes of the U.S.S.R.

Veksler was a creator of the large groups of scientists and engineers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, the Lebedev Physics Institute, and at Moscow University. He also was active in international scientific collaboration, serving for many years as chairman of the Commission on High–Energy Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. His services were noted abroad by the award of the U.S. Atoms for Peace Prize in 1963.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Veksler’s writings include Eksperimentalnye metody yadernoy fiziki (“Experimental Methods in Nuclear Physics”; Moscow–Leningrad, 1940); “Novy metod uskorenia relyativistskikh chastits” (“A New Method of Accelerating Relativistic Particles”), in Doklady Akafemii nauk SSSR, 43 , no. 8 (1944), 346; “On the Stability of Electron Motion in the Induction Accelerator of the Betatron Type,” in Fizicheskii zhurnal, 9 , no. 3 (1945), 153; “Elektronno–yadernye livni kosmicheskikh luchey i yaderno–kaskadny protsess” (“Electronuclear Showers of Cosmic Rays and the Nuclear–Cascade Process”), in Zhurnal eksperimentalnoi i teoreticheskoi fiziki, 19 , no. 9 (1949), 135; Ionizatsionnye metody issledovania izlucheny (“Ionization Methods in the Study of Radiation”; Moscow, 1950); and “Kogerentny metod uskorenia zaryazhennykh chastits” (“The Coherent Method of Accelerating Charged Particles”), in Atomnaya energiya, 11 , no. 5 (1957), 427.

A. T. Grigorian