Nikolai Shakura

Nikolai Ivanovich Shakura (Николай Иванович Шакура; born October 7, 1945, in

Belarus SSR The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and ...

) is a Russian astrophysicist. He is the head of the relativistic

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, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the ...

department at the

Sternberg Astronomical Institute The Sternberg Astronomical Institute, or GAISh, is a research institution in Moscow, Russia, a division of Moscow State University. In Russian it is named or , respectively. The institute is named after astronomer Pavel Karlovich Shternberg. It wa ...

Moscow University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, and six branches. Al ...

. As a well-known specialist in the theory of

accretion disks An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is most frequently a star. Friction, uneven irradiance, magnetohydrodynamic effects, and ...

, as well as

X-ray binaries An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelengt ...

, together with

Rashid Sunyaev Rashid Alievich Sunyaev (, ; born 1 March 1943 in Tashkent, USSR) is a German, Soviet, and Russian astrophysicist of Tatar descent. He got his MS degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 1966. He became a professor ...

, he is particularly famous as the developer of the standard theory of disk accretion

http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~jackph/2004f/Universe_of_disks.html#toc]. 1945 births Living people Russian astronomers Russian physicists Academic staff of Moscow State University {{Russia-scientist-stub