On 12 April, the Joint Institute celebrates the birthday of an outstanding physicist Venedict Petrovich Dzhelepov.

V. P. Dzhelepov was one of the founders of the accelerator laboratory established in 1948 in a place that became Dubna later. On the grounds of secrecy and proximity to the Moscow Sea, the laboratory was named the Hydroengineering Laboratory of the USSR AS. Mikhail Grigorievich Meshcheryakov was appointed Director of the Hydraulic Engineering Laboratory and Scientific Director for Accelerator Development, while V. P. Dzhelepov became Deputy Director. The successful launch of the Synchrocyclotron in 1949 and bright results obtained at it enabled the transformation of the Hydroengineering Laboratory into the Institute of Nuclear Problems of the USSR AS in 1953. It was particularly in INP (future Laboratory of Nuclear Problems) together with the Electrophysical Laboratory of the USSR AS (future Laboratory of High Energy Physics) where the legendary Synchrophasotron was being finished. It then became the core of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research established in 1956. From 1956 to 1988, V. P. Dzelepov was the Director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems, and since 1988, he was its honorary director.

V. P. Dzhelepov is a prominent scientist and outstanding science organizer widely known for his research in the field of nuclear physics, elementary particle physics, physics and technology of high-power accelerators and their practical application. He is twice a laureate of State USSR Prize, Deputy Academician-Secretary of the RAS Nuclear Physics Division, honorary doctor of the Dresden University of Technology and Šafárik University. It is he who initiated and supervised the construction of Russia’s first clinico-physical complex based on the synchrocyclotron of the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems for proton treatment of cancer and for space medicine.