Viktor Hambardzumyan - Biography

Biography

Hambardzumyan was born to an Armenian family in Tbilisi in 1908. His father was the philologist and writer Hamazasp Asaturovich Hambardzumyan, the translator of Homer’s Iliad into Armenian. In 1924 Victor entered the physico-mathematical department of Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute and then of Leningrad State University. As a student in 1926 he published his first scientific article, devoted to sun jets. Hambardzumyan continued his postgraduate studies at Pulkovo Observatory under the guidance of professor Aristarkh Belopolsky in 1928–1931.

His work first came to prominence in physics when in 1929 with Dmitry Ivanenko he published a paper demonstrating that atomic nuclei could not be made from protons and electrons. Three years later this was confirmed when Sir James Chadwick discovered neutrons, which with protons make up atomic nuclei.

In 1930 he married Vera Feodorovna Klochihina (born at Lisva, Solikamsk uyezd, Perm). After three years of affiliation at Leningrad University in 1934 Hambardzumyan founded and headed the first astrophysics chair. In 1939–1941 Hambardzumyan was the director of the Leningrad University Observatory. In 1940 he joined the Communist Party

The War found him holding the position of the pro-rector of Leningrad State University. The scientific laboratories of the University were evacuated in 1941 to remote Elabuga (Tatarstan) where Hambardzumyan spent four years directing the work of the refugee laboratories. In 1939 Ambartsumian was elected a correspondent member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1953 he became a full academician of the Academy. In 1943, the heaviest period of the war, the Armenian Academy of Sciences was founded. Iosif Orbeli was appointed as the president and Hambardzumyan as the vice president of Armenian SSR Academy.

In 1947 Hambardzumyan was elected as the president of the Armenian SSR Academy and since then he was invariably re-elected to the position till 1993. In 1993 he became the Honorary President of the Armenian National Academy.

In 1946 the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory was founded. Hambardzumyan became its first Director and directed the Observatory till 1988. Hambardzumyan was the President of the International Astronomical Union from 1961 till 1964. He was twice elected the President of the International Council of Scientific Unions (1966–1972).

Congratulating Hambardzumyan on his 80th birthday, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983, wrote,

"The only other astronomer of this century who compares with Academician Hambardzumyan in his consistency and devotion to astronomy is Professor Jan Oort; but they would appear to be dissimilar in every other way. It will be a worthy theme for a historian of science of the twenty-first century to compare and contrast these two great men of science. He is an astronomer. There can be no more than two or three astronomers in this century who can look back on a life so worthily devoted to the progress of astronomy. (Astrophysics, Vol 29, No.1, p 408, 1989)."

Hambardzumyan died in August 1996 in Byurakan and is buried next to the Grand Telescope Tower.