Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2018 number

The article studies the activity of Academician M.F. Zhukov (1917-1998), an outstanding scientist-mechanic of the XX century. He is known as a specialist in the field of gas-discharge plasma, electric arc plasmatrons and their application in space technology. Innovations by M.F. Zhukov are successfully used in metallurgy, machine building and other scientific and technical areas. Mikhail Zhukov was born in 1967 on August 24 (September 6) in a large family of the railway worker in Orel province. Thanks to diligence and the pursuit of knowledge, the provincial young man was able to enter the preparatory department (rabfak) at Moscow State University (MSU). The profession choice was determined by well-known scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, to whom the young man wrote a letter. Training at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of MSU made it possible for Mikhail Zhukov to receive an excellent education. During the Great Patriotic War, Mikhail Zhukov worked in Zhukovsky Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI). In 1941-1942 a group of TsAGI’s employees headed by Academician Sergei Chaplygin was in evacuation in Novosibirsk. Mikhail Zhukov took part in the combat aircraft improvement. After the war, he continued research on supersonic aviation at the Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Motors (CIAM). In 1950 he defended his thesis and headed the department at this institute. Since 1956, M.F. Zhukov switched to study gas-discharge plasma and the development of powerful electric arc generators of plasma (plasmatrons), which was related to the space industry intensive development. In 1958, Mikhail Zhukov was invited to work in the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences by Academician Sergei Khristianovich, who proposed to the 41-year-old candidate of sciences to organize a laboratory, and then a department of plasmodynamics at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM). From 1970 to 1996, the department headed by M.F. Zhukov continued to work in the Institute of Thermophysics (IT), afterward transferred to ITAM again. In Novosibirsk, M.F. Zhukov realized his creative potential and became a scientist with world renown. He defended his doctoral dissertation (1962), was elected a Corresponding Member (1968), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1992) and awarded prestigious prizes and awards. Professor M.F. Zhukov taught at Novosibirsk State University and Novosibirsk State Technical University, and brought up a pleiad of students achieving significant results in science.