Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky (russian: Ио́сиф Самуи́лович Шкло́вский; sometimes transliterated ''Josif, Josif, Shklovskii, Shklovskij'') (1 July 1916 – 3 March 1985) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

and astrophysicist. He is remembered for work in theoretical

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

and other topics, as well as for his 1962 book on extraterrestrial life, the revised and expanded version of which was co-authored by American astronomer

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ex ...

in 1966 as ''Intelligent Life in the Universe''. He won the Lenin Prize in 1960 and the

Bruce Medal The Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal is awarded every year by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for outstanding lifetime contributions to astronomy. It is named after Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an American patroness of astronomy, and was fi ...

in 1972.

Asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

2849 Shklovskij __NOTOC__ Year 849 (Roman numerals, DCCCXLIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Battle of Ostia: A Saracen Arab fleet from Sardi ...

and the crater Shklovsky (on the

Martian Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the pr ...

moon Phobos) are named in his honor. He was a Corresponding Member of

Soviet Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

since 1966.

Early life

Shklovsky was born in

Hlukhiv Hlukhiv ( uk, Глу́хів, ) or Glukhov (russian: Глухов, translit=Glukhov) is a small historic town on the Esman River. It is a city of regional significance in the Sumy region of Ukraine. Hlukhiv is administratively incorporated as ...

, a city in the

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

part of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

, into a poor Ukrainian Jewish family. After graduating from the seven-year secondary school, he worked as a

foreman __NOTOC__ A foreman, forewoman or foreperson is a supervisor, often in a manual trade or industry. Foreman may specifically refer to: *Construction foreman, the worker or tradesman who is in charge of a construction crew * Jury foreman, a head ju ...

on building Baikal Amur Mainline. In 1933 Shklovsky entered the Physico-Mathematical Faculty of the

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. There he studied until 1938, when he took a Postgraduate Course at the Astrophysics Department of the

Sternberg State Astronomical Institute Sternberg may refer to: Places ;Austria *Burgruine Sternberg, a castle ruin in Carinthia ;Czech Republic *Šternberk (german: Sternberg), a town with an eponymous castle and seat of the mediæval County of Sternberg * Český Šternberk (german: B� ...

and remained working in the Institute until the end of his life. He died in Moscow, aged 68.

Research

He specialized in theoretical

and

radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation comin ...

, as well as the Sun's corona,

supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or whe ...

e, and

cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

s and their origins. He showed, in 1946, that the radio-wave radiation from the Sun emanates from the ionized layers of its corona, and he developed a mathematical method for discriminating between thermal and nonthermal radio waves in the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

. He is noted especially for his suggestion that the radiation from the

Crab Nebula The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1842 u ...

is due to

synchrotron radiation Synchrotron radiation (also known as magnetobremsstrahlung radiation) is the electromagnetic radiation emitted when relativistic charged particles are subject to an acceleration perpendicular to their velocity (). It is produced artificially in ...

, in which unusually energetic electrons twist through magnetic fields at speeds close to that of light. Shklovsky proposed that cosmic rays from supernova explosions within 300 light years of the sun could have been responsible for some of the mass extinctions of life on earth. In 1959, Shklovsky examined the orbital motion of

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

's inner satellite Phobos. He concluded that its orbit was decaying, and noted that if this decay was attributed to friction with the Martian atmosphere, then the satellite must have an exceptionally low density. In this context, he voiced a suggestion that Phobos might be hollow, and possibly of artificial origin. This interpretation has since been refuted by more detailed study, but the apparent suggestion of extraterrestrial involvement caught the public imagination, though there is some disagreement as to how seriously Shklovsky intended the idea to be taken. However, Shklovsky and

argued for serious consideration of " paleocontact" with extraterrestrials in the early historical era, and for examination of myths and religious lore for evidence of such contact. His 1962 book, Вселенная, жизнь, разум (''Universe, Life, Intelligence''), was expanded upon and re-issued in 1966 with American astronomer

as co-author under the title ''Intelligent Life in the Universe'' (1966). This was the first comprehensive discussion of this field. Discussing the biological as well as astronomical issues of the subject, its unique format, alternating paragraphs written by Shklovsky and Sagan, demonstrated the deep mutual regard between the two and allowed them to express their views without compromise.The title of the book can be seen in the movie Don’t look up. In 1967, before the discovery of

pulsar A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Ea ...

s, Shklovsky examined the X-ray and optical observations of Scorpius X-1 and correctly concluded that the radiation comes from an accreting

neutron star A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. w ...

Quotes

In the September 1965 issue of ''Soviet Life'',NSA Technical Journal, Winter 1966 - Vol. XI, No. 1: Communications with Extraterrestrial Intelligence he made the following statement regarding prospects for the future of humanity: :''Profound crises lie in wait for a developing civilization and one of them may well prove fatal. We are already familiar with several such critical (situations):'' ::''(a) Self-destruction as a result of a thermonuclear catastrophe or some other discovery which may have unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences.'' ::''(b) Genetic danger.'' ::''(c) Overproduction of information.'' ::''(d) Restricted capacity of the individual's brain which can lead to excessive specialization, with consequent dangers of degeneration.'' ::''(e) A crisis precipitated by the creation of artificial intelligent beings.''

Personal life

His memoir, ''Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon: Tales of a Soviet Scientist,'' was published posthumously in 1991 by W.W. Norton & Co. In "Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon", Shklovsky recalled his visit to

Philip Morrison Philip Morrison (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005) was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and for his later work in quantum physi ...

, who in 1959 had co-authored with

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

colleague Giuseppe Cocconi the paper in Nature magazine which marks the beginning of the modern search for extraterrestrial life, and their discussion of such issues. Bitter over Soviet anti-semitism, of the five pioneer investigators of the field, Cocconi, Morrison,

's Frank Drake (of the 1961 Project Ozma and the Drake equation), Sagan, and Shklovsky, Shklovsky was quite aware of sharing his Jewish identity with Sagan. Indeed, Sagan's Jewish heritage was also Ukrainian Jewish. He was known for his sharp wit and extreme likability. Colleagues in the astronomy department at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, remember fondly his visit there in the 1970s. Well known for his ''Intelligent Life in the Universe'', he was asked by a graduate student if UFO sightings are as common in the Soviet Union as in the United States. "No," he replied. "In this area the Americans are far more advanced than us."

Bibliography

*I.S. Shklovsky: ''Cosmic Radio Waves'', Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1960 *I.S. Shklovsky: ''Вселенная, жизнь, разум'' ( en, Universe, Life, Intelligence), Moscow, USSR Academy of Sciences Publisher, 1962 **Revised and extended English translation of this book, coauthored with

, was first published in 1966, under the name ''Intelligent Life in the Universe'', one of the latest reissues was published in 1998 by Emerson-Adams Press () *I.S. Shklovsky: ''Physics of the Solar Corona'', Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK, 1965 *I.S. Shklovskii, ''Supernovae'', New York: Wiley, 1968 *I.S. Shklovsky: ''Stars: Their Birth, Life, Death'',San Francisco, 1978, *I.S. Shklovsky: ''Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon: Tales of a Soviet Scientist'', W.W. Norton & Company, 1991.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shklovsky, Iosif 1916 births 1985 deaths People from Hlukhiv People from Chernigov Governorate Moscow State University alumni Moscow State University faculty Jewish astronomers Soviet astronomers Soviet astrophysicists Search for extraterrestrial intelligence Interstellar messages Radio astronomers Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Jewish Ukrainian scientists Ukrainian astronomers