Vadim Nikolaevitch Lebedenko
11.10.1939 – 11.05.2008
Vadim Nikolaevitch Lebedenko
11.10.1939 – 11.05.2008
Vadim Nikolaevitch
Lebedenko passed away on 11th May 2008,
whilst at home in Moscow.
Vadim Nikolaevitch
was born on 11th October 1939 in the village Shakhta-2, in the Donezk region, eastern Ukraine. His childhood, during
difficult war and post-war times, was spent in this coal mining region. After
secondary school he entered an industrial technical school that led him into
industry for several years. This was followed by 3 years of military service in
the Soviet Army.
He was then admitted to the Moscow
Engineering and Physics Institute. He graduated with distinction in
experimental nuclear physics in 1968, under the supervision of Prof. Boris Rodionov, and went on
to obtain his PhD with Prof. Boris Dolgoshein as
supervisor. In Prof Dolgoshein’s laboratory, he
worked on the development of a liquid argon spark chamber operated in streamer
mode. Vadim constructed a liquid argon ionisation chamber which re-discovered
the effect of electron emission from liquid to gas and applied it to radiation
detection, obtaining the first images of an alpha-particle source placed in the
liquid by using a multiwire spark chamber in the gas
phase. This was the first two-phase emission detector and a clear demonstration
of the potential of this technique for the detection of ionising particles.
In 1970s Vadim joined the Institute of
High Energy Physics in Protvino, working on a liquid
argon calorimeter for particle physics. He also proposed a system of argon
purification with hot getters and began work on microchannel-plate
position-sensitive detectors. He was a member of the team which constructed
MARS-I, the first of several very large scale liquid argon calorimeters built
at the institute.
In 1983 he moved to the Institute of
Theoretical and Experimental Physics, to the laboratory headed by Prof.
Lyubimov, where he applied his skills to further the development of
microchannel-plate detectors, as well as scintillation detectors for the E761
experiment at Fermilab, a hadron-blind detector for high energy physics and
cryogenic detectors based on liquefied noble gases.
Around this time he was invited to
M.I.T. by Prof. Min Chen to work on a liquid xenon scintillation calorimeter
for the proposed US accelerator SSC, a project which attracted a number of
physicists from leading Russian institutions in the field.
In 1998, Vadim joined a new
international dark matter experiment, ZEPLIN-III (UK, Russia and Portugal),
moving to Imperial College London in 2000 to undertake most of the design and
construction work in the team led by Prof. Tim Sumner. This novel double-phase
xenon detector, presently taking scientific data at the Boulby Underground
Laboratory, UK, owes its original design, final engineering realisation and
assembly to Vadim Nikolaevitch. His role as the
“father” of ZEPLIN-III is undisputed in the collaboration: he
took it from a mere design concept to a final instrument, a true statement of
skill, knowledge and resolve, from an outstanding scientist who mastered both
the most intricate physics and the most challenging engineering. He passed away at the moment when his detector had
just started to measure relevant physical data, culminating his decade-long
endeavour.
He will always be remembered as an excellent
scientist and engineer, cheerful friend, excellent person and a teacher for
many of us always ready to share his unique knowledge and experience.
Contributions by A. Bolozdynya, D. Akimov, V. Chepel, T. Sumner