Oleg Firsov

Oleg Borisovich Firsov (Russian: Олег Борисович Фирсов, June 13 [OS May 31] 1915, Petrograd – April 2, 1998, Moscow) – was a Russian Soviet physicist-theorist known for his work on atomic interaction. He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1972 for a series of work titled "Elementary processes and non-elastic scattering at nuclear collisions".

Firsov was the son of Boris Nilovich Firsov (1888–1920), one of the first Russian pilots, and Olga Vladimirovna von Walden (by mother Golitsyn, 1892–1920). He lost his parents at the age of 4, and grew up in an orphanage.

He graduated with an undergraduate degree in physics from Leningrad State University in 1938, and remained there until the end of World War II. Staying in the city, he then moved to the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad, where he obtained his PhD in 1947 under Yakov Frenkel's supervision. In 1955, he was invited by Igor Kurchatov to Moscow. He joined the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy where worked until 1994, when he became severely ill.

He was married to the physicist Victoria Yevgenyevna Lichko (1915–2004). Their daughter is the composer Elena Firsova (b. 1950).

Firsov's PhD thesis and first publications were devoted to gas discharges and yielded a model of spark formation and propagation, which is still used to describe both natural lightning and laboratory discharges. He returned to this topic in the 1970s to develop a more accurate theory.

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