On 14 April 2026, Scientific Leader of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Oganessian turns 93 years old. An outstanding scientist and a leading specialist in experimental nuclear physics, he is known to the global scientific community for his fundamental research on the structure of nuclear matter and the synthesis of superheavy elements of the Mendeleev’s Periodic Table.
Since 1958, Yuri Oganessian’s scientific activity has been inextricably linked with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. Together with the first FLNR JINR Director, Academician Georgy Flerov, he laid the foundations of the Institute’s modern scientific, technical, and experimental capabilities for the development of heavy ion physics.
The most important achievement in the study of the mechanisms of interaction of complex nuclei was the discovery of a new class of reactions, the cold fusion of massive nuclei, made by Yuri Oganessian in 1974. This method gained wide international recognition and has been used for many years by the world’s leading scientific centres for the synthesis and study of the properties of transactinide elements.
Subsequently, Academician Oganessian proposed using fusion reactions of neutron-enriched actinide isotopes with accelerated calcium-48 ions to study extremely heavy nuclei. In the period from 1999 to 2010, a scientific group led by Yuri Oganessian successfully synthesised new elements with atomic numbers 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118. These results made it possible to completely fill the seventh period of the Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. In addition, the recorded properties of the radioactive decay of new nuclei served as direct experimental evidence of the existence of the “island of stability” of superheavy elements, which became one of the most significant discoveries in nuclear physics in the last decades.
Today, the scientists continue to search, and their attention is focused on the elements of the eighth period. In May 2026, a historic experiment on the synthesis of element 119, led of Yuri Oganessian, will begin at the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR. Berkelium will be used as a target, which will be irradiated with an intense beam of titanium-50 ions. Preparations for this complicated experiment have been underway for the past four years, and it is expected that the first preliminary results will be obtained this year.
The multinational team of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research congratulates Yuri Oganessian on his birthday. We wish you good health, inexhaustible creative energy, and new brilliant scientific achievements!
