The National Award in the Field of Science and Technology for 2004 has been conferred on Ludwig Dmitriyevich Faddeyev for outstanding achievements in developing mathematical physics.
Ludwig Faddeyev was born on March 23, 1934, in Leningrad, to a family of well-known mathematicians and professors of Leningrad State University. He graduated from the Leningrad State University physics faculty (mathematics department). He defended his candidate dissertation at the age of 25, his doctoral thesis at 29, and became an academician at age 42.
He is a member and secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Mathematical Sciences Section and holds the title of professor.
He was awarded the USSR National Award in 1971 and the Russian Federation National Award in 1995.
Mr Faddeyev is one of the most outstanding mathematicians and physicists of the last fifty years. His work has had a defining influence on the state of mathematical physics today and has opened up and developed a whole series of new directions in science. He uses mathematical means to resolve physics problems not yet worked on by theoretical physicists.
One of his first world-recognised achievements was to resolve the quantum problem of scattering of three particles. This led to a theory of small particle systems that dozens of scientists use in their research today.
Mr Faddeyev’s work on quantum theory of calibrating fields became the foundation for a standard model in the theory of elementary particles.
Mr Faddayev was the first to find solutions to inverse problems with many variables. Given that much in nature is based on the principle of solving inverse problems, in which the “reflected” information obtained is used to recreate the object, the results of Mr Faddeyev’s work have found wide application in various areas of science.
Mr Faddeyev’s completely new approach to the theory of quantum spin chains has led to the discovery of new mathematical structures – quantum groups.
Mr Faddeyev’s work over the last decade on a multidimensional theory of solitons (solitary waves) uses a broad spectrum of mathematical methods, from abstract topology to computational mathematics and has already found applications in condensed state theory and the theory of elementary particles.
Mr Faddeyev’s school is the world leader in a whole range of areas of mathematical physics.
His work is included in textbooks in many areas of mathematics and physics and constantly cited and used in scientific literature.
He heads the Russian National Committee of Mathematicians and the L. Eiler International Mathematics Institute in St. Petersburg.
Mr Faddeyev is a foreign member of academies in the world’s leading countries (United States, France, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Brazil). The National Academy of the United States in one year elected Mr Faddeyev as a foreign member of two sections at once – mathematics and physics.
Mr Faddeyev has been made an honorary professor by foreign universities and is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s oldest academies. He was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize by the American Physics Society, the A.P. Karpinsky International Prize, the Max Planck Gold Medal by the German Physics Society and the Paul Dirac Medal by the International Theoretical Physics Institute.
In 1986–1990, Mr Faddeyev was the first and so far only Soviet or Russian scientist to be president of the International Mathematics Union.
Physicists consider him one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, and mathematicians count him as a mathematician of world standing.
The National Award for 2004 in the Field of Science and Technology is conferred on academic Vyacheslav Ivanovich Molodin and doctor of history Natal’ya Viktorovna Polos’mak for discovering and researching unique complexes of the Pazyryk culture in the 6th-3rd centuries BC in the Altai highlands.
As a result of archaeological digs under the leadership of Vyacheslav Molodin and Natal’ya Polos’mak in 1990–1995 in the almost inaccessible conditions of the mountainous Altai region, unique complexes of the Pazyryk culture (Scythian times, 6th-3rd centuries BC) were discovered. The name comes from the geographical name of the area, Pazyryk.
The Pazyryk culture of Scythian times, monuments of which are located on the territory of the Altai, the crossroads of civilisations, epochs and the state borders of China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia, is an outstanding page in human history. The characteristics of the Pazyryk culture – since it was discovered during digs on burial mounds in 1865 – are given in all university textbooks, historical encyclopaedias and reference books.
The discovery and research by Vyacheslav Molodin and Natal’ya Polos’mak of burial mounds on the Ukok plateau were a fundamentally new stage in the study not just of the Pazyryk culture, but of Scythian themes in general, which is an important component of the history of ancient world culture and civilisation.
The complexes researched by Vyacheslav Molodin and Natal’ya Polos’mak have great importance for understanding key problems of the ancient history of Eurasia. Essentially it means the discovering of a highly cultured Eurasian civilisation, which significantly changes our ideas about the ancient world in general.
This discovery has made it possible to learn a great deal about the ancestors peoples. A great deal of interest has been shown in this work all over the world. Almost all the world’s media wrote about the discovery of the Ukok plateau.
In 1998, UNESCO decided to put the Ukok plateau on the list of world heritage properties.
In the uniqueness of the data, and also in the degree of diverse scientific research and analysis, the fundamental and well-founded nature of the academic results, the discovery by Molodin and Polos’mak is a world-class event, and an important contribution to world archaeology and history.
The National Award of the Russian Federation for 2004 in the Field of Science and Technology goes to Aleksandr Yur’evich Kvasnikov, Arkady Yevtikh’evich Vereshkin and Valery Ivanovich Kolin’ko for research and creation of an optic-electronic complex of space surveillance.
The unique complex created by Russian scientists and constructors significantly increased the possibilities of space surveillance. It makes it possible to detect an object approximately 1 metre in diameter at a distance of up to 40,000 kilometres.
There are no equivalents in the world today to the Russian complex, in which elements of artificial intelligence are used, surpasses all other international equipment of this kind. The equipment used in the complex, including the unique optics and software, were manufactured at Russian factories.
Along with ensuring national security, the capabilities of the complex can be used in the space industry – in test flights of spacecraft, conducting ecological space monitoring, observing “space waste” which presents dangers for spacecraft, and also for gaining surveillance information for observing international agreements on space use.