At the meeting of the RAS Council on Heavy Ion Physics being held these days in Saint Petersburg, a ceremony of awarding the Flerov International Prize took place. JINR Director, RAS Academician Grigory Trubnikov presented the Prizes.

FLNR Scientific Leader, RAS Academician Yuri Oganessian gave a speech at the ceremony. He noted that the V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute founded in 1922 had become the second in the world after the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris to study radium. Afterwards, attracting the brightest minds of the country, the institute played a crucial role in the formation of the USSR atomic project. When the Chernobyl accident befell us, scientists of the Radium Institute joined its liquidation from the very first days. The accumulated material has become the basis for the organization of the Russian nuclear energy industry and ensuring its safety,” Academician Oganessian highlighted in his congratulatory speech.

The Prize 2022 has been presented to three outstanding scientists, staff members of the Khlopin Radium Institute:

• Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov, Professor, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, Director General of the Khlopin Radium Institute from 1996 to 2005 (the widow Svetlana Rimskaya-Korsakova received the Prize)
• Leonid Pleskachevsky, Candidate of Physics and Mathematics
• Sergey Khlebnikov, Candidate of Physics and Mathematics

The winners of the Prize 2022 have made a great contribution to the development of nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry research and their applied aspects, as well as to strengthening the long-term fruitful cooperation between the V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute and JINR.

The Joint Institute established the Prize of Academician Georgy Flerov in 1993. The Prize is awarded every 2 – 3 years to scientists for outstanding scientific research in the fields of nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry. The Prize has an international status: 31 scientists from the USA, Germany, France, England, Poland, and Russia became its laureates.