Viktor Safronov
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Viktor Sergeevich Safronov (Russian:Виктор Сергеевич Сафронов) (1917 - September 19, 1999) is a Soviet astronomer who was one of the first to put forward a consistent picture of how the planets formed from a disk of gas and dust around the Sun.
Safronov graduated from MSU Department of Mechanics and Mathematics in 1941. He defended a dissertation for the Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 1968. His scientific interests were planetary cosmogony, astrophysics and geophysics.
His planetesimal hypothesis of planet formation is still widely accepted among astronomers, although alternative theories exist (such as the gravitational fragmentation of the protoplanetary disk directly into planets).
[edit] Awards
- Otto Schmidt USSR Academy of Sciences Prize (1974)
- Gerard Kuiper Prize in Planetary Science (1990)
[edit] List of selected publications
- Evolution of the Protoplanetary Cloud and Formation of the Earth and the Planets. Moscow: Nauka Press, 1969. Trans. NASA TTF 677, 1972.
[edit] External links
- List of Gerard Kuiper award recipients at the website of American Astronomical Society
- (Russian) A short biography
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