Last year the 90th anniversary of the birth of Russian scientific polymath Nikolai Nikolaevich Bogolyubov was marked by an international conference, which travelled through the three cities where he worked
Last year marked the 90th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding Russian scientist in the field of mathematics, mechanics and physics: academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Bogolyubov (1909-92). An international conference, Problems of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, dedicated to his memory, took place on 27 September – 6 October. The scientific and memorial sessions were held in Moscow, Dubna and then Kiev – the cities in Russia and Ukraine where Bogolyubov left his remarkable heritage as a teacher and a founder of new scientific schools and research directions.
The conference covered those fields to which Bogolyubov made fundamental contributions and initiated new lines of research: mathematics and nonlinear mechanics; quantum field theory; elementary particle physics; statistical physics and kinetics; and nuclear physics. More than 200 scientists from many countries attended. The conference was organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), with the support of UNESCO, INTAS, the International Mathematical Union, the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, Moscow State University (MSU), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the State Committee of Ukraine for Science and Intellectual Property and the Heisenberg Landau and Bogolyubov-Infeld Programmes.
Awards ceremony
During the opening at MSU on 27 September, the participants were addressed by the president of the RAS, Yu S Osipov; the rector of MSU, V A Sadovnichy; and the director of the JINR, V G Kadyshevsky. The first day saw the award of prizes: the N N Bogolyubov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 1999 went to academician V S Vladimirov; and the N N Bogolyubov Prize of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research for 1999 was awarded to Prof. I R Progogine, Nobel Prize winner and director of the Solvay Institute (Brussels), and to academician V G Bar’yakhtar (Kiev).
At the plenary session, talks were presented by V S Vladimirov, Yu A Mitropol’sky and V G Bar’yakhtar. I R Progogine spoke about causality, irreversibility and non-locality. CERN director-general Luciano Maiani reviewed research on particle physics conducted and planned at CERN. Talks on mathematics and nonlinear mechanics; quantum field theory; and statistical physics and kinetics, given at parallel sessions, completed the first day’s proceedings.
On the following day the conference continued at the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the RAS, where plenary talks were delivered by D V Shirkov (Dubna), L D Faddeev (St Petersburg), G I Marchuk (Moscow), N N Bogolyubov Jr (Moscow), W Thirring (Vienna) and J Devreese (Antwerp).
On 29 September, participants paid tribute to Bogolyubov by laying flowers on his tomb in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery. Participants then moved to Dubna, where sessions were continued at the Bogolyubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics until 2 October. Of great interest were the reminiscences by N N Bogolyubov’s brothers, A N Bogolyubov (Kiev) and M N Bogolyubov (St Petersburg).
The Dubna part of the conference included more than 60 talks by well known physicists, including K Nishijima (Tokyo), V A Matveev (Moscow), A N Tavkhelidze (Tbilisi), A M Baldin (Dubna), H Araki (Tokyo), A A Logunov (Protvino), J Zinn-Justin (Saclay), I A Savin (Dubna), A A Slavnov (Moscow), A N Sissakian (Dubna), V A Moskalenko (Dubna) and Yu Ts Oganessian (Dubna).
The Kiev part of the conference opened on 4 October in the Main Conference Hall of the NASU. The participants were welcomed by B E Paton, president of the NASU; A G Sitenko, director of the Bogolyubov Institute of Theoretical Physics; and V G Kadyshevsky, director of the JINR. Academicians V G Bar’yakhtar (Kiev) and Yu A Mitropol’sky (Kiev) emphasized Bogolyubov’s role in developing new ideas and directions in statistical physics, kinetics and nonlinear mechanics. Plenary talks were presented by D V Shirkov (Dubna), P N Bogolyubov (Dubna) and O S Parasuyk (Kiev).
On 5 and 6 October, sessions continued at the Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics of the NASU and the Institute of Mathematics of the NASU with more than 70 talks. V G Kadyshevsky presented new ideas on the extension of the Standard Model, based on geometric reasoning. Problems of “ghost” singularities in quantum field theory were examined by D V Shirkov. N N Bogolyubov Jr suggested a development of polaron models. Plenary sessions included talks by R Jackiw (Cambridge, MA), I P Yukhnovski (Lvov), J Wess (Munich), D Ya Petrina (Kiev), W Manfliet (Antwerp), Yu L Klimontovich (Moscow), S P Peletminskii (Kharkov) and W Ebeling (Berlin). In the programme of parallel sessions on mathematics and physics, ample time was allotted to representatives of the Kiev School of Theoretical Physics, established by Bogolyubov.
The conference, including 42 plenary talks and more than 150 contributions at parallel sessions, closed on 6 October in Kiev.
