Pavel Cherenkov
Name in native script: Павел Черенков
1904–1990, Novaya Chigla, Voronezh Oblast, Russia, Moscow, Russia
Russian physicist who discovered the blue light emitted by charged particles exceeding the speed of light in a medium, winning the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Born to a peasant family in Voronezh Oblast, Cherenkov graduated from Voronezh State University in 1928 and joined the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow in 1930. In Sergey Vavilov's laboratory he studied the luminescence of solutions irradiated by gamma rays — work that led to the discovery bearing his name.
The faint glow he patiently observed by eye in a darkened room turned out to be a new radiation: Cherenkov radiation. Explained theoretically by Igor Tamm and Ilya Frank in 1937, the effect became the basis of Cherenkov detectors, indispensable tools in particle physics and neutrino astronomy.
Nobel-winning work
Between 1934 and 1937, Cherenkov carried out a long series of experiments irradiating transparent liquids with gamma rays and detected a faint blue light emitted along a narrow direction around the secondary particles. He showed this light was distinct from fluorescence: it appeared in every transparent liquid, was asymmetrically distributed, and depended on the electrons' kinetic energy.
The effect — now called Cherenkov radiation — occurs when a charged particle moves faster than the phase velocity of light in the medium, emitting a cone of light. Tamm and Frank supplied the complete electrodynamical explanation in 1937, and the discovery became the basis of the Cherenkov detectors used in every particle physics laboratory.
Workplaces: Lebedev Physical Institute
Russia