Mikhail Ivanovich Eremets (3 January 1949 – 16 November 2024) was a Belarusian experimentalist in

high pressure In science and engineering the study of high pressure examines its effects on materials and the design and construction of devices, such as a diamond anvil cell, which can create high pressure. ''High pressure'' usually means pressures of thousan ...

physics, chemistry and

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

. He was particularly known for his research on

superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in superconductors: materials where Electrical resistance and conductance, electrical resistance vanishes and Magnetic field, magnetic fields are expelled from the material. Unlike an ord ...

, having discovered the highest critical temperature of 250 K (-23 °C) for superconductivity in lanthanum hydride under high pressures. Part of his research contains exotic manifestations of materials such as conductive

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

polymer A polymer () is a chemical substance, substance or material that consists of very large molecules, or macromolecules, that are constituted by many repeat unit, repeating subunits derived from one or more species of monomers. Due to their br ...

nitrogen Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetal and the lightest member of pnictogen, group 15 of the periodic table, often called the Pnictogen, pnictogens. ...

and transparent

sodium Sodium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Na (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 element, group 1 of the peri ...

Education and early life

Eremets was born in the Pinsk Region. He studied physics at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute ( National Research Nuclear University MEPhI). In 1978 he received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

at the Moscow Institute of General Physics of the

Academy of Sciences of the USSR The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (u ...

Research and career

Eremets went on to work as a researcher in the High Pressure Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences in

Troitsk Troitsk (, ''Tróick'') is the name of several types of inhabited localities in Russia, inhabited localities in Russia. Modern localities ;Urban localities *Troitsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, a town in Chelyabinsk Oblast; *Troitsk, Moscow, a town in Tro ...

(Moscow region), eventually rising to the position of director of the High-Pressure Physics Department. After 1991, Eremets took on positions in several high pressure laboratories around the world, including the

University of Paris VI Pierre and Marie Curie University ( , UPMC), also known as Paris VI, was a public research university in Paris, France, from 1971 to 2017. The university was located on the Jussieu Campus in the Latin Quarter of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, ...

in France, the

National Institute for Materials Science is an Independent Administrative Institution and one of the largest scientific research centers in Japan. History The growth and development of today's scientific research center has passed through several phases in a number of locations: In ...

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

and

Osaka University The , abbreviated as UOsaka or , is a List of national universities in Japan, national research university in Osaka, Japan. The university traces its roots back to Edo period, Edo-era institutions Tekijuku (1838) and Kaitokudō, Kaitokudo (1724), ...

in Japan, the Geophysical Laboratory at the

Carnegie Institution for Science The Carnegie Institution for Science, also known as Carnegie Science and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is an organization established to fund and perform scientific research in the United States. This institution is headquartered in W ...

in the United States, and

Clarendon Laboratory The Clarendon Laboratory, located on Parks Road within the Science Area in Oxford, England (not to be confused with the Clarendon Building, also in Oxford), is part of the Department of Physics at Oxford University. It houses the atomic and la ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

in the United Kingdom. In 2001, Eremets joined the

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Otto Hahn Institute; ) is a non-university research institute under the auspices of the Max Planck Society (German: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) in Mainz, Germany. It was created as the Kaiser Wilhelm Instit ...

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

, Germany, as a staff member and leader of the research group "High-pressure chemistry and physics". Eremets was working on high temperature superconductivity in

metallic hydrogen Metallic hydrogen is a phase of hydrogen in which it behaves like an electrical conductor. This phase was predicted in 1935 on theoretical grounds by Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington. At high pressure and temperatures, metallic hydr ...

and hydrogen-rich compounds. Additionally he was interested in polymeric

, the synthesis of novel high energy density materials, the stability of diamonds, extending the present high static pressure limits over 500 GPa and the synthesis of molecules at pressure and temperature conditions occurring in the

Earth mantle Earth's mantle is a layer of silicate rock between the crust and the outer core. It has a mass of and makes up 67% of the mass of Earth. It has a thickness of making up about 46% of Earth's radius and 84% of Earth's volume. It is predominant ...

. The core facility of the Mikhail Eremets research is a special

diamond anvil cell A diamond anvil cell (DAC) is a high-pressure device used in geology, engineering, and materials science experiments. It permits the compression of a small (sub- millimeter-sized) piece of material to extreme pressures, typically up to around 1 ...

, which can generate extreme pressures between the two diamonds anvils. This has already led to records of static pressure of 440 GPa, which corresponds to 4.4 million atmospheres and exceeds the pressure inside the Earth (360 GPa). The device can be complemented by a laser heating system, a

cryostat A cryostat (from ''cryo'' meaning cold and ''stat'' meaning stable) is a device used to maintain low cryogenic temperatures of samples or devices mounted within the cryostat. Low temperatures may be maintained within a cryostat by using various ...

, magnets and X-ray sources. In a Nature paper published in summer 2015 Eremets describes how

hydrogen sulfide Hydrogen sulfide is a chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless chalcogen-hydride gas, and is toxic, corrosive, and flammable. Trace amounts in ambient atmosphere have a characteristic foul odor of rotten eggs. Swedish chemist ...

conducts electricity without resistance at minus 70 degrees Celsius and at a pressure of 1.5 million bar. Thus, the 66-year-old researcher established with his team a temperature record for the superconductivity. In their latest experiments, Eremets and his collaborators have found the superconducting temperature of lanthanum hydride to be 250 K, being closer to room temperature by additional 47 K.

Death

Eremets died on 16 November 2024, at the age of 75.

Honours and awards

* 2023: The Bragg Lecture, University College London * 2022: Bernd T. Matthias Prize for superconducting materials * 2020: Breakthrough Winner in Physical Sciences, Falling Walls, Berlin * 2019: James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials * 2017: Bridgman Award AIRAPT * 2016: Honorary doctorate of the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

, Germany * 2015: Ugo Fano Medal of th
Rome International Center for Materials Science of Superstripes
(RICMASS) * 2015: Top Ten listing "People who mattered this year" magazine „Nature“ 2015 * 2015: "Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2015," Physics World magazine * Visiting professor
Chinese Academy of Sciences
* Visiting professor

(ISSP), Japan. * Visiting Professor, Research Center for Extreme Materials,

, Japan.
European Research Council Advanced Grant
“Exploring conductive and metallic hydrogen”https://erc.europa.eu/exploring-conductive-and-metallic-hydrogen

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eremets, Mikhail 1949 births 2024 deaths 20th-century Belarusian scientists 21st-century Belarusian scientists Max Planck Society people Soviet physicists People from Pinsk district