Biography
Flyorov was born in Rostov-on-Don and attended the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (now known as the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University) and majored in thermal physics and nuclear physics.
He is known for writing to Stalin in April 1942 and pointing out the conspicuous silence within the field of nuclear fission in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. Flyorov's urgings led to the eventual development of the USSR's own atomic bomb project.
He was one of the discoverers of spontaneous fission. He also claims as his discovery two transition metal elements: seaborgium and bohrium.
He founded the Flyorov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna in 1957, and acted as director there until 1989. Also during this period, he chaired the Scientific Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Read more about this topic: Georgy Flyorov
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)