Vitalii Iosifovich Goldanskii

Born June 18, 1923, in Vitebsk. Soviet physical chemist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1962). Member of the CPSU since 1950.

Gol’danskii graduated from Moscow State University in 1944. From 1942 to 1952 he worked at the Institute of Chemical Physics (returning there in 1961) and from 1952 to 1961 at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He has also been teaching at the Moscow Physical Engineering Institute since 1951, becoming a professor in 1956.

Gol’danskii’s major works are devoted to modern nuclear chemistry. He has developed the chemical applications of the Móssbauer effect and the annihilation of positrons, discovered the asymmetry of Mössbauer spectra, and studied the chemical reactions of the positronium and a number of phenomena observed during polymerization in the solid state induced by ionizing radiation and shock waves. Gol’danskii theoretically established the existence of two-proton radioactivity in the nuclei of atoms and predicted the properties of many neutron-deficient and neutron-excessive isotopes. He was the first to experimentally determine the electric polarizability of the proton. Since 1967 he has been editor in chief of the journal Khimiia vysokikh energii. He has been awarded the D. I. Mendeleev Prize (1966), three orders, and various medals.