On 26 January, an online meeting of the RAS Presidium was held. It was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the birth of RAS ex-President Academician Vladimir Evgenievich Fortov, an outstanding scientist and science organizer. At the meeting, friends and colleagues of Academician Fortov, who passed away on 29 November 2020, spoke about his scientific heritage and contribution to physics of extreme state of matter.

JINR Vice-Director RAS Academician Boris Yurievich Sharkov made a report at the meeting “The decisive contribution of V. E. Fortov to physics of extreme state of matter and relativistic ion beams. Experiments at accelerators in Russia and abroad.”

“Vladimir Fortov paid attention to intense beams of heavy ions as far as they create unique experimental opportunities different from those achieved in explosive experiments under the impact of shock waves on the matter. <...> Vladimir Evgenievich got interested at that time in a new project – the world-largest accelerator complex FAIR under construction,” Academician Sharkov said.

Boris Sharkov highlighted the uniqueness of the Russian participation in the FAIR project when after joining the project, Russia became not only a strategic partner but also an owner of the facility at the insistence of the Russian party and thanks to Fortov’s efforts.

“The FAIR international project is a research infrastructure aimed at international cooperation. About 500 scientists from 20 Russian institutes developed the scientific and technical justification and now continue participating in the creation of setups and experiment preparation.<...>Thanks to the interest of Russian participants plasma physics was included in a number of scientific areas of the project. The ideologist of the experimental programme at the facility was Vladimir Evgenievich Fortov,” Boris Sharkov noted.

Speaking about the contribution made by Vladimir Fortov to the international project FAIR, Boris Sharkov also said that during their numerous discussions, Academician Fortov highlighted that participation in international projects, including in the NICA project, allows using unique experimental facilities for acquiring new knowledge about fundamental physical properties of the matter. It provides targeted attraction of contracts for organizations and the high-tech industry, as well as allows integrating the advanced information technologies into information space.

JINR is a long-standing partner of and active participant in the FAIR project. It should be noted that in addition to Russia and Germany, the latter one being the location country of the complex and at the same time the JINR Associate Member, such JINR Member States as Poland and Romania also take part in the international project FAIR. Moreover, Finland, France, India, Slovenia, Sweden, and Great Britain also take part in the project.

More details about meeting of RAS Presidium on scientificrussia.ru

Photo by Nikolay Malakhin. Scientific Russia