Vladimir Damgov - Biography

Biography

Vladimir Damgov was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, the son of a lawyer and of a French language teacher. He received his early schooling in Sofia and at the Georgi Benkovski Gymnasium at Teteven, a mountain town in the Balkan Range, in the District of Lovech. He studied at Moscow Technical University, from which he graduated in 1971 with a degree in Informatics and Engineering Physics. He went on to study at M. V. Lomonossov University (Moscow State University). There, he wanted to change his major to Philosophy, in order to study Bertrand Russell, but was forbidden to do so by the Bulgarian authorities. He shone at chess, earned a degree in radiophysics (1977) and, the same year, received a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics. He collaborated at some of the most advanced space programs at the Russian Academy of Science.

Vladimir Damgov became a Doctor of Science at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS, Sofia) in 1992. He was a professor at the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he headed the Department of Nonlinear Space Dynamics. He was a visiting professor at University of Kyoto, University of Leeds, Université de Montréal a o. His colleagues voted him Scientist of Year 2001-2002. He has 17 patents and over 250 publications to his name. He was a member of the New York Academy of Science.

Having followed a distinguished career in the Soviet Union and in Bulgaria, Vladimir Damgov never joined the Communist Party. After the fall of Communism, he joined the Bulgarian Socialist Party and became a leader of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria, of which he was a Vice-President. As a scientist, he was a member of the reviewing board of the European Union Framework Program for Research and Technological Development, even though Bulgaria itself was not yet a member of the EU.

In 2005, Vladimir Damgov presented himself for the parliamentary elections on the list of the Bulgarian Socialist Party in the District of Lovech, and was elected Deputy to the 40th Parliament of the Republic of Bulgaria (Narodno Sebranie). In his first weeks as a member of Parliament, he chaired an inter-party commission to investigate the severe occurrences of environmental pollution in and around the city of Stara Zagora. Vladimir Damgov was a member of the Parliamentary Commissions on Education and Research, and on Defense. He was elected Chairman of the Bulgarian Delegation to the European Defense OrganizationEurofor, Western European Union (Union de l'Europe Occidentale). In December 2005, less than six months after his election, Vladimir Damgov was diagnosed with acute leukemia. He died in Hanover, Germany, the 20 June 2006, before a blood stem cell transplant could be undertaken at the University Hospital (Medizinische Hochschule Hannover - MHH) there. He was buried on June 29 in his home-town of Teteven.