Fedor Lvovich Shapiro

Born Mar. 24 (Apr. 6), 1915, in Vitebsk; died Jan. 30, 1973, in Moscow. Soviet physicist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968).

Shapiro graduated from Moscow State University in 1941. Beginning in 1945, he worked at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1959 he was appointed deputy director of the Neutron Physics Laboratory of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. He was also a professor at Moscow State University (from 1967).

Shapiro’s main works dealt with nuclear and neutron physics. Shapiro developed and experimentally substantiated the method of time-delay neutron spectroscopy in lead and subsequently discovered the excited state of ⁴He using this method and generalized the law for the absorption of slow neutrons by nuclei. He also proposed a method of producing polarized neutrons by sending them through a polarized proton target and used the method to investigate the interaction of such neutrons with polarized nuclei, including deuterium nuclei. Shapiro was the first to detect experimentally ultracold neutrons and investigate their properties. He demonstrated the feasibility of measuring the magnetic moments of neutron resonances from their shift in a magnetic field.

Shapiro received the State Prize of the USSR in 1971 (with others) for a series of studies on developing and improving pulsed reactors. He was awarded two orders and various medals.