Alexei Starobinsky
A 2013 picture of Starobinsky looking directly at the camera with a neutral expression
Starobinsky in 2013
Born
Alexei Alexandrovich Starobinskii

(1948-04-19)19 April 1948
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Died21 December 2023(2023-12-21) (aged 75)
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Doctoral advisorYakov Zeldovich
Doctoral students

Alexei Alexandrovich Starobinsky (Russian: Алексе́й Алекса́ндрович Староби́нский; 19 April 1948 – 21 December 2023) was a Soviet and Russian theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He received the 2014 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics with Alan Guth and Andrei Linde "for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation".

Early life and education

Alexei Alexandrovich Starobinsky was born on 19 April 1948 in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union, to two radio physicists.[1][2] He went to a physics and technology high school where he graduated in 1966.[1] He attended Moscow State University, earning an MSc degree in physics in 1972.[3] In 1975, he obtained a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics from the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Yakov Zeldovich.[4]

Career

After finishing his doctorate, he remained at the Landau Institute working as a research scientist. In 1997, he became the institute's principal research scientist, a position he held until his death. From 1990 to 1997, he headed the institute's department of gravitation and cosmology and, from 1999 to 2003, he was also the institute's deputy director.[2][5]

Starobinsky was a visiting professor at the École Normale Supérieure in 1991, the Research Center for the Early Universe at the University of Tokyo from 2000 to 2001, the Institut Henri Poincaré in 2006, the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics of Kyoto University in 1994 and 2007, and Utrecht University from 2014 to 2015.[5][6] In 2017, he was also appointed as a part-time professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics[4]

Starobinsky held editorial positions in a number of journals including General Relativity and Gravitation from 1989 to 1997, the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics from 1991, the International Journal of Modern Physics D from 1992 and the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics from 2002.[6]

Research

Starobinsky's research commenced while he was still a student in the early 1970s with the study of particle creation in the early universe alongisde Zeldovich. In 1973, building on Zeldovich's prior research, he showed that, according to the uncertainty principle, rotating black holes must emit particles.[7][8] Their work spurred Stephen Hawking to find a mathematical treatment for the effect, who later theorised that all black holes emit energetic particles, an effect known today as Hawking radiation.[9]

Subsequently, Starobinsky shifted his focus to cosmology and began investigating the early universe and the Big Bang, attempting to use quantum mechanics and general relativity to understand how an expanding universe may have formed. In 1979, he proposed that the early universe could have gone through an extremely rapid period of exponential expansion[10]. His model, known as Starobinsky inflation, postulates that the expansion is driven by quantum gravity effects. Starobinsky also found that this expansion would have would have produced gravitational waves. These waves would be detectable today as a background.[11] The work remained unknown outside of the Soviet Union. Around the same period, Alan Guth independently proposed a theory of exponential expansion, which he termed 'inflation', to tackle the horizon, flatness and magnetic monopole problems with the Big Bang.[10][12] The shortcomings with Guth's theory were successfully fixed by Andrei Linde in 1981.

The Starobinsky model of inflation implied that quantum fluctuations, random disturbances of a point in space, would have been stretched beyond the quantum scale by the exponential expansion of the universe.[13] Viatcheslav Mukhanov and Gennady Chibisov proposed that these quantum fluctuations eventually resulted in the largest structures in the universe. Their predictions have been matched by observations of the cosmic microwave background.[12][14]

Personal life and politics

Starobinsky's father died when he was two years old.[1] In February 2022, he signed an open letter by Russian scientists condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[15][16] Starobinsky died on 21 December 2023 at the age of 75.[17]

Honors and awards

Starobinsky received the Medal For Labour Valour of the Soviet Union in 1986 and the second class Order For Merit to the Fatherland in 2009.[4]

Starobinsky was awarded the 1996 Friedmann Prize for his work on the inflationary stage of the universe and its observational manifestations.[18]

In 2009, Starobinsky and Mukhanov were jointly awarded the Tomalla Prize for their contributions to cosmological inflation. Starobinsky was specifically recognised for his calculations of the gravitational radiation emitted during the inflationary epoch of the universe.[19] In 2010, he received the Oskar Klein Medal.[2][20] Starobinsky and Mukhanov were also co-recipients of the Amaldi Medal from the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation in 2012 and the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2013.[21][22]

In 2014, together with Alan Guth of MIT and Andrei Linde of Stanford University, Starobinsky was awarded the Kavli Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for his pioneering contributions to the theory of cosmic inflation.[23]

In 2019, he was a co-recipient of the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics together with Mukhanov and Rashid Sunyaev for his work on the cosmic microwave background.[24][25] He was awarded the Pomeranchuk Prize with Larry McLerran in 2021 and the ICGAC award in 2023 with Katushiko Sato.[26][27]

In 1997, Starobinsky was elected a correspondent member of the Russian Academy of Sciences before becoming a full member in 2011.[3] He was also an elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the United States National Academy of Science as well as a fellow of the American Physical Society.[5][28]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "A Physicist Has to Be a Romantic". HSE University. September 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 "Alexei Starobinsky". Physics Today. 19 April 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  3. 1 2 "Alexei A. Starobinsky". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on 23 December 2023. Retrieved 24 December 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 "Academician Alexey Starobinsky Passes Away". HSE University. 22 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 "Prof. Dr. Alexei Starobinsky". Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  6. 1 2 "Curriculum Vitae – Alexei A. Starobinsky" (PDF). International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  7. ↑ Starobinsky, A. A.; Zel'dovich, Ya. B. (25 June 1971). "Particle Production and Vacuum Polarization in an Anisotropic Gravitational Field". Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. 34 (6): 1159. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  8. ↑ Starobinskil, A. A.; Churilov, S. M. (27 February 1973). "Amplification of electromagnetic and gravitational waves scattered by a rotating "black hole"". Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  9. ↑ White, Michael; Gribbin, John (2002). Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science (2nd ed.). National Academies Press. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-309-08410-9.
  10. 1 2 Clery, Daniel (2014). "Pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation". Kavli Prize. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  11. ↑ Starobinskii, A.A. (5 December 1979). "Spectrum of relict gravitational radiation and the early state of the universe". Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. 30 (11): 682–685. Archived from the original on 9 May 2014. Retrieved 14 June 2014.
  12. 1 2 Hreha, Sarah (7 November 2013). "2013 Gruber Cosmology Prize Press Release". Gruber Foundation. New Haven, Connecticut. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  13. ↑ da Silva, Wilson (2 March 2015). "The physicist who inflated the Universe". Cosmos. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  14. ↑ Mukhanov, V. F.; Chibisov, G. V. (26 February 1981). "Quantum fluctuations and a nonsingular universe". Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. 33 (10): 532–535. Retrieved 13 January 2024 – via INSPIRE-HEP.
  15. ↑ Открытое письмо российских учёных и научных журналистов против войны с Украиной [An open letter from Russian scientists and scientific journalist against the war in Ukraine]. T-Invariant Т-инвариант (in Russian). 24 February 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  16. ↑ Stern, Boris (30 March 2022). "«The war against Ukraine is unjust and senseless»: Russian scientists courageously condemn the invasion". The Insider. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  17. ↑ "«У Алексея Старобинского была жажда высшей истины»". Свято-Филаретовский институт (in Russian). Retrieved 21 December 2023.
  18. ↑ "Премия имени А.А. Фридмана" [A. A. Friedmann Prize]. Russian Academy of Sciences (in Russian). Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  19. ↑ "Tomalla Prize". Tomalla Foundation. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  20. ↑ Freeland, Emily Elizabeth (30 May 2023). "Previous Oskar Klein Memorial Lectures". Stockholm University. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  21. ↑ "The Amaldi Medal". Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  22. ↑ "Mukhanov and Starobinsky to Receive $500,000 Gruber Cosmology Prize for Developing Theory of Universe's Earliest Moments". Gruber Foundation. 11 July 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  23. ↑ Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit (29 May 2014). "Nine Scientists Share Three Kavli Prizes". ScienceInsider. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  24. ↑ "La medaglia Dirac ai teorici dell'espansione dell'universo". ANSA (in Italian). 12 August 2019. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  25. ↑ Menga, Marina (8 August 2019). "2019 Dirac Medal Announced". International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  26. ↑ "Professor Starobinsky won Pomeranchuk Prize". Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. 7 June 2021. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  27. ↑ "Press release". XV International Conference on Gravitation, Astrophysics and Cosmology (ICGAC15). 3 July 2023. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  28. ↑ "Alexei Starobinsky, Professor in Faculty of Physics, Elected Foreign Associate at U.S. National Academy of Sciences". HSE University. 18 May 2017.
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