Leonid Fedorovich Vereshchagin

Born Apr. 16 (29), 1909, in Kherson. Soviet physicist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966; corresponding member, 1960). Hero of Socialist Labor (1963).

From 1934 to 1939, Vereshchagin worked at the Ukrainian Physics and Technical Institute in Kharkov, and from 1939 to 1954 he was head of a laboratory at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Since 1954 he has been director of the High-Pressure Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (since 1958 the Institute of High-Pressure Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR). Vereshchagin has been a professor at Moscow State University since 1953. His principal works deal with problems in ultrahigh pressures (more than 150 published works). He has also studied the physical properties of solid bodies under high pressures, including their physical and mechanical properties, structure, and electric conductivity. Vereshchagin has developed methods for masuring physical quantities, such as deformations and speed of sound under high pressures. In 1960 synthetic diamonds were synthesized for the first time in the USSR under his direction. Vereshchagin received the Lenin Prize in 1961 and the State Prize of the USSR in 1952. He has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.