Alexei Smirnov (physicist)

Alexei Yuryevich Smirnov
Born	October 16, 1951 Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian
Citizenship	Russian
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Known for	Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein effect
Awards	J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics (2008) Albert Einstein Medal (2016)
Scientific career
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	ICTP, Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics

Alexei Yuryevich Smirnov (Russian: Алексе́й Ю́рьевич Cмирно́в; born October 16, 1951) is a neutrino physics researcher and one of the discoverers of the MSW Effect.

Alexei Smirnov graduated from MSU Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University in 1974. In 1977, he began to work at the Institute for Nuclear Research (INR) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where he received his Candidate of Sciences degree in 1979. In 1989, he received a degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical sciences. He also taught at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University in the period from 1982 to 1990.

Smirnov joined the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy in 1992 as a staff-associate while continuing his affiliation with INR (Moscow) as a leading research scientist. He became a staff member with ICTP in 1997 and where he held the position of principal research scientist. Since 2015 he is a permanent scientist and Max-Planck Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK) in Heidelberg.

The main area of Smirnov's research is neutrino physics and astrophysics. In 1984—1985, following earlier work by Lincoln Wolfenstein, Smirnov, together with Stanislav Mikheyev, uncovered effects of resonance enhancement of neutrino oscillations in matter and the adiabatic conversion in non-uniform media known now as the Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein effect (MSW effect).Solutions to the solar neutrino problem based on the MSW effect have been proposed. The effects were also applied to supernova neutrinos and neutrinos of various origins propagating in the Earth.

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