Yuri Alekseevich Trutnev (November 2, 1927, Moscow — August 6, 2021, Sarov) was a Soviet and Russian nuclear physicist, one of the creators of the Soviet thermonuclear weapon, and a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1991; corresponding member since 1964). He spent most of his scientific career at the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF) in Sarov, where he worked from 1951 until the last years of his life.[1]
Biography and scientific work
He was born in Moscow into the family of the soil scientist A. G. Trutnev. At the start of the Great Patriotic War he was evacuated to the Urals — to Troitsk in Chelyabinsk Region — and then to Gorky Region. In May 1944 he returned to Leningrad. In 1950 he graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Leningrad State University, and in February 1951 he was assigned to VNIIEF as an engineer.[1]
Trutnev is one of the co-authors — together with A. D. Sakharov and Ya. B. Zeldovich — of the idea underlying the design scheme of modern thermonuclear charges, and one of the authors of the first Soviet thermonuclear charge, tested in 1955. Together with Yu. N. Babaev, he formulated an idea for improving radiation implosion, which they implemented in 1958 in "Project 49" — a development that became the key basis for improving the thermonuclear arsenal of the USSR.[1]
In 1958–1962, under his leadership, a range of thermonuclear charges was developed that formed the foundation of the Soviet system of missile-nuclear weapons. In 1962, a group of specialists headed by him achieved ignition and burning of thermonuclear plasma during its implosion by the energy of an atomic explosion.[1]
In April 1964 he was appointed head of a department, in October deputy head of a sector, in 1965 head of a sector, and in 1966 deputy scientific director of VNIIEF. In 1965 he took over the institute's theoretical division, succeeding Academicians A. D. Sakharov and Ya. B. Zeldovich in that post, and headed it until 1999. During that period the team designed hundreds of nuclear and thermonuclear charges for virtually all branches of the Armed Forces. In 1978 he became first deputy scientific director and head of the theoretical division, and from 1993 he was first deputy scientific director of RFNC-VNIIEF for advanced areas of research.[1]
He directed work on ensuring the reliability of nuclear weapons in the absence of full-scale testing, on creating weapons based on new physical principles, as well as on nuclear power safety, the development of energy based on the uranium-thorium cycle, and alternative energy (fuel cells, hydrogen energy). He made a significant contribution to the development of proton radiography. In 1993 he received the title of professor and became a professor in the Department of Theoretical Physics at MEPhI. Together with I. V. Shamanin, in 2018 he proposed a theoretical proof of the existence of the mass defect.[1]
Connection with the Nizhny Novgorod area
During the evacuation years (1941–1944), Trutnev lived in Gorky Region. All of his mature scientific work was tied to Sarov (until 1995 called Arzamas-16), a closed city in Nizhny Novgorod Region where RFNC-VNIIEF is located. He died there on August 6, 2021, and was buried at the city cemetery on the Alley of Honorary Citizens.[1]
Recognition and awards
Winner of the Lenin Prize (1959). In 1962 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Winner of the USSR State Prize (1984) and the Prize of the Government of the Russian Federation (2016). In 2003 he was awarded the I. V. Kurchatov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for a body of classified work that provided the country with a modern nuclear shield.[1]
Sources
- eduspb.com — TRUTNEV Yuri Alekseevich — Association of Teachers of Saint Petersburg
- dic.academic.ru — Trutnev Yuri Alekseevich — what is... Who is Trutnev Yuri Alekseevich?