Evgeny Velikhov
Soviet physicist (1935–2024)
Evgeny Pavlovich Velikhov (Russian: Евгений Павлович Велихов; 2 February 1935 – 5 December 2024) was a Russian physicist and scientific leader. His scientific interests included plasma physics, lasers, controlled nuclear fusion, power engineering, and magnetohydrodynamics (high-power pulsed MHD generators). He was the author of over 1500 scientific publications and a number of inventions and discoveries.
Velikhov held the post of president of the Kurchatov Institute (named after Igor Kurchatov) and first Secretary (head) of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
Life and career
Evgeny Velikhov graduated from the Department of Physics at M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) in 1958, where he specialized in theoretical physics. From 1958 until 1961, he studied at graduate school. After completing his graduate work, he began work as a junior researcher at the Institute of Atomic Energy, the precursor institution to the Russian Research Centre (RRC) "Kurchatov Institute". He spent most of his scientific career rising through the ranks of this famous federal scientific agency.
His early work regarding fluid and plasma instabilities led to the discovery of the magnetorotational instability in 1959, and the electrothermal instability in 1962.
The public source identifies “Evgeny Velikhov” as soviet physicist (1935–2024). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Evgeny, Velikhov and Soviet.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4106859. VIAF identifies the subject as 5508030. The Library of Congress control number is n79092932. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2024, 1500 and 1958.
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This entry incorporates text from “Evgeny Velikhov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.