Surkov, Yuri Alexandrovich

Born March 31, 1926 in Moscow.

Childhood and adolescence

In June 1941, together with his younger brother, he rested in a pioneer camp for the children of the staff of the Central Committee of the party, and the camp was evacuated a few days after the start of the war to the city of Shadrinsk. Father until 1947 served in the army. Mother was evacuated to the Urals.

Pioneer camp located in Shadrinsk on the basis of the local technical school. The children continued to study at school, they themselves maintained order in the rooms.

After his mother returned from evacuation, Yura Surkov, who was already 16 years old, was released to Moscow at the request of his parents. Successfully passed the exams for the 10th grade and entered the Moscow Mining Institute .

After graduating from the 1st course in 1944, he volunteered to serve in the Black Sea Fleet and was first assigned to the Levanevsky Naval Aviation School. Then he served at the military airfield in Kaponi, where new aircraft were based - dive bombers that carried out military operations in conjunction with the ships of the Black Sea Fleet. The next stage of his service took place on a submarine floating base in Sevastopol. After the end of the war until 1947, he served in the units escorting German prisoners of war from concentration camps to work on the restoration of the destroyed military facilities.

Upon returning to Moscow, the advice of Father P. Khudyakov’s friend, Deputy Director of the Institute of Atomic Energy (IAE), visited this country's largest research center and decided to enter the Moscow Mechanical Institute (now Moscow Engineering Physics, MEPI) at the faculty of “nuclear physics” , passed the entrance exams in physics and mathematics and was admitted to the 2nd course.

The leading scientists of the country and the world - academicians L. A. Artsimovich, M. A. Leontovich, I. E. Tamm, A. I. Leipunsky, M. S. Kozadaev, lectured at the faculty, and lecture notes written by students were handed over to the secret section and then issued for study only in the library of the Institute.

In 1952 he graduated from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute with a degree in design and operation of physical devices and installations, was qualified as an engineer-physicist, and his thesis was the creation of a Wilson chamber .

Start of research

After graduating from MEPhI, it was included in the expedition detachment of the IAE headed for Armenia to Mount Alagez ( Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory ) to conduct the first experiments to study the composition and properties of cosmic rays and the reactions of their interaction with complex nuclei using the camera developed by him.

While working at the institute, I got access to work at the first charged particle accelerator in the country in Dubna. At the same time, access was issued sporadically, and when the target was irradiated for about 1 hour, only short-lived isotopes accumulated, which decayed within a few hours or days, and a planned replacement of the target would stop the work of other researchers. Surkov made a risky act, climbing through the mounting hatch into the chamber and installed a new target - a small metal plate, with two dosimetrists standing nearby - one with a stopwatch and the other with a dosimeter. Due to this, results were obtained that allowed to discover the existence of previously unknown atomic nuclei of elements of average atomic weight and to study their radiation characteristics.

In the 1950s, at the request of A. P. Vinogradov, Kurchatov transferred two graduate students — Yu. A. Surkov and I. S. Dneprovsky — to the Institute of Geochemistry, since there were no specialists in nuclear physics there.

In 1958 he defended his thesis at the Institute of Physical Chemistry and continued work in the laboratory of planetary research at the Institute of Geochemistry.

In the late 1950s - early 1960s, under the leadership of Academician A. P. Vinogradov in the USSR, a cosmochemical direction was developed in the study of the bodies of the Solar System.

In 1961, with a special decision of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Surkov was appointed head of the laboratory of planetary research GEOKHI of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1978 became the chief designer of the institute.

In 1970 he defended his doctoral dissertation, in 1971 he was awarded the academic title of professor.

In 1991 - elected an academician of the International Academy of Astronautics and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences .

He died in 2005.

The founder of experimental cosmochemistry, developed in the process of improving space technology, is the head of the design, creation and operation of instruments that were installed on spacecraft that explored the Moon, Venus, Mars.

Gamma-spectrometry, X-ray spectrometry, mass spectrometry and other methods of physical and chemical research were used in the instruments created.

In 1966, the Luna-10 and Luna-12 spacecraft (SP) using the first in the history of cosmonautics gamma spectrometer (GS-10L), created under his leadership, measured the content of natural radioactive elements and determined the type of rocks lying on the surface of the moon. For the first time it was shown that the Moon, like the Earth, has its active thermal history, which led to the differentiation of its substance. At the same time, the first simple experiments were carried out to study the X-ray radiation of the Moon, which arises when it is irradiated by cosmic rays and the solar wind.

In 1967 he was sent to the United States to familiarize American scientists with the results of the first lunar explorations in the Soviet Union. At this time, the international situation was heated to the limit, however, between the Academies of Sciences of the USSR and the USA there was an agreement on the exchange of scientific achievements in the field of space exploration. Since the first landing station and the first satellite of the Moon in the world, at which Soviet scientists first determined the composition of lunar rocks, were created in the laboratory of Yu. A. Surkov, it was he who received an invitation from the American Academy of Sciences.

In the laboratory of Yu.A. Surkov, the equipment specially created by him carried out the reception and primary research of samples of lunar soil delivered to Earth by the space stations Luna-16 , Luna-20 , Luna-24 . With the help of seismometers, moonquakes with foci located at a depth of 600–1000 kilometers were recorded. Based on radar observations, measurements of temperature and thermal radiation, theoretical estimates of the conductivity of the lunar interior were made. The study of the moon using space tools and the study of lunar soil on Earth gave answers to many questions posed by classical astronomy.

In the years 1967-1969 on the spacecraft Venera-4 , Venera-5 , and Venera-6 with the help of original gas analyzers GA-6B, GA-7B and GA-8B, based on a complex of various sensors and moisture content meters atmosphere, first determined the composition of the atmosphere of Venus. It was shown that the atmospheres of Venus and the Earth have the same nature and only a different distance from the Sun caused a complete difference in their modern appearance. In 1970, a group of scientists, including Professor Yu. A. Surkov, was awarded the Lenin Prize for creating the AMS Venus-4, −5 and −6 and the complex of scientific research to determine the physical parameters and chemical composition of the atmosphere of the planet Venus.

In 1972–1975, the Venus-8 , Venera-9 and Venera-10 satellites were used for the first time to determine the content of radioactive elements in various geomorphological regions of the Venusian surface using the improved GS-12V gamma spectrometer; the first panoramic images of the surface of Venus were obtained; radiation densitometers (RP-75) and mass spectrometers (MAV-75) were first used.

In the study of the atmosphere of Venus, mass spectrometry played a special role. The first mass spectrometer (MS) for the study of Venus’s dense atmosphere was used at the AMS "Venera-9 and Venus-10" by Yu. A. Surkov and his colleagues. After these studies, MS began to be used on almost all Soviet and American spacecraft. headed to Venus.

On the spacecraft Venus-12 and Venus-14 in 1978-1982, the composition of the aerosol component of the cloud layer of Venus was experimentally determined by the X-ray radiometric method using BDRA-1B instruments for the first time. It is shown that sulfur and chlorine are the main components of Venusian clouds. Further research in this area, which allowed for a more complete picture of the composition and structure of the Venus cloud layer, was conducted under the guidance of Yu.A. Surkov in 1984 on the Vega-1 and Vega-2 satellites using a Soviet-French instrument "Malachite", consisting of a French pyrolyzer collector and a highly sensitive mass spectrometer, created in the laboratory of Yu. A. Surkov.

When launching the spacecraft Venus-13 and Venus-14 , the task of determining the composition of Venusian rocks in the landing area of ​​the stations was first set forth. The experiment, which has no equal in the world, was conducted in March 1982. The stations reached Venus by conducting a television survey of the landing areas, examining the characteristics of the atmosphere and determining for the first time the elemental composition of the rocks using X-ray spectrometers BDRP-2B. The rock sample for analysis was selected using a soil sampling device created in Surkov's laboratory together with the Design Bureau of General Engineering. All operations on taking a sample of the soil and its transportation into the apparatus were carried out automatically using pyrotechnic means. The results of these unique studies made it possible to develop an understanding of the history of the formation of the surface and the crust of Venus.

Yu. A. Surkov and a group of scientists who worked together with him were awarded the USSR State Prize (1983) for the creation and use of a set of tools to study the surface of the planet Venus.

Of all the planets in the solar system, Mars attracted the most attention of scientists and specialists. In the 1970s, as a result of the flights of the Soviet Mars-2 , Mars-3 , Mars-4 , and Mars-5 satellites and the American Viking-1 and Viking-2 satellites, an extensive scientific information on the composition, structure and properties of the atmosphere, on seasonal and climatic changes, on the geological structure of the Martian surface, which do not exclude the possibility of life on the planet. However, the first exobiological studies undertaken by the spacecraft Viking-1 and Viking-2, launched to Mars in September 1975, met with a number of difficulties and did not give a definite answer.

In the laboratory of Yu.A. Surkov using a scintillation gamma spectrometer GS-11M installed on the Mars-5 spacecraft, in 1973, the content of radioactive elements and the main rock-forming elements lying on the surface of the planet were determined for the first time. On the Phobos-2 spacecraft in 1988, the elementary composition of rocks in various geomorphological provinces of the equatorial part of the Martian surface was determined using a GS-14 STSF gamma spectrometer. The types of rocks are identified and their terrestrial analogues are defined.

At the beginning of the XXI century, under his leadership, the preparation of scientific experiments on the study of the Moon and the satellite of Mars (Phobos) was started in the framework of the Luna-Glob and Phobos-Grunt projects.

Author of 4 monographs, more than 300 scientific works on nuclear physics and planetology (some of them are published in English), more than 20 patented inventions.

He was a member of the Space Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, deputy chairman of the Section for the Study of Solar System Bodies, a member of the international working group on penetrometry, a member of the editorial board of the journal Earth and Universe , a member of the RAS Scientific Council on Geochemistry.

• Father - Surkov Alexander Anatolyevich (1900-1983) - served in his youth in the Red Army, participated in the battles against the White Poles on the Western Front. In 1939 he was again drafted into the army, participated in the Soviet-Finnish war, served until 1947.
• Mother - Alexandra Petrovna Surkova (1905–1997)
• Family - Kuleshova Nina Ivanovna (born in 1957)

• Order of the October Revolution (1975) - for merits in the development of Soviet science and in connection with the 250th anniversary of the USSR Academy of Sciences ^[1]
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1986) - for the progress achieved in the implementation of the Xth Five-Year Plan for the development of science technology and the introduction of research results into the national economy of the USSR ^[1]
• Medal "For the victory over Germany"
• Lenin Prize (in the group, in 1970) - for the creation of the AMC "Venus-4, −5 and −6" and a complex of scientific studies to determine the physical parameters and chemical composition of the atmosphere of the planet Venus
• USSR State Prize (1983) - for the creation and use of a set of tools for studying the surface of the planet
• Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1989)
• Award of A. P. Vinogradov (1999) - for the monograph “Exploration of Terrestrial Planets from Spasecraft” (“Earth planet research from spacecraft”)
• Medal of S. P. Korolev "For participation in space research" (1985)
• Medal named after Yu. A. Gagarin (1986)
• Medal named after P. L. Kapitsa

• Surkov, Yuri Alexandrovich on the official website of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• Surkov, Yuri Alexandrovich on the mathematical portal Math-Net.Ru
• Surkov Yuri Alexandrovich (Neopr.) . biograph.ru. The date of circulation is January 15, 2017.
• Surkov Yuri Alexandrovich (Neopr.) . eurasian-defence.ru. The appeal date is February 15, 2017.