Gersh Budker

Who was Gersh Budker?

Gersh Itskovich Budker, also named Andrey Mikhailovich Budker, was a Soviet physicist, specialized in nuclear physics and accelerator physics.

He was elected a Corresponding Member of the Siberian Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences on 28 March 1958 and was promoted to an Academician of the Division of Nuclear Physics on 26 June 1964.

He is best known for his invention in 1968 of electron cooling, a method of reducing the emittance of particle beams by thermalisation with a copropagating electron beam.

Academician Budker was the founder and first Director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Akademgorodok, Russia. His portrait decorates the famous Round Table Room in the Institute. After his death, the Institute was renamed the Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics in his honour.

Budker died in Akademgorodok from a heart attack at 59.

Budker's life and works were celebrated in a collection of essays by his colleagues, including Pyotr Kapitsa, Lev Landau, and Andrei Sakharov, and two by Budker himself. The collection, G. I. Budker: Reflections & Remembrances was published in 1988 and was later translated into English by James W. Van Dam.