Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on 14 April 1933 to Armenian parents. His father was from Rostov, while his mother was from Armavir. Oganessian spent his childhood in Yerevan, the capital of then-Soviet Armenia, where his family relocated in 1939. His father, Tsolak, a thermal engineer, was invited to work on the synthetic rubber plant in Yerevan. When the Eastern Front of World War II broke out, his family decided to not return to Rostov since it was occupied by the Nazis. Yuri attended and finished school in Yerevan. Oganessian was married to Irina Levonovna, a violinist and a music teacher in Dubna, with whom he had two daughters. His daughters reside in the U.S.
Career
Oganessian moved to Russia, where he graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1956. He thereafter sought to join the Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow, but as there were no vacancies left in Gersh Budker's team, he was instead recruited by Georgi Flerov and began working at the JointInstitute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, near Moscow. He became director of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR in 1989, after Flerov retired, and remained in the position until 1996, when he was named the scientific leader of the Flerov.
Discovery of super-heavy chemical elements
In the 1970s, Oganessian invented the method of cold fusion, a technique to produce transactinide elements. It played a vital role in the discoveries of elements from 106 to 113. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, the partnership of JINR, led by Oganessian, and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, led to the discovery of six chemical elements : bohrium, meitnerium, hassium, darmstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium. His newer technique, called hot fusion, helped to discover the rest of the superheavy elements. The technique involved bombarding calcium into targets containing heavier radioactive elements that are rich in neutrons at a cyclotron. The elements discovered using this method are nihonium, flerovium, moscovium, livermorium, tennessine, and oganesson.
Recognition
American chemist Sherry Yennello calls him the "grandfather of super-heavy elements." Oganessian is the author of three discoveries, a monograph, 11 inventions, and more than 300 scientific papers.
Lomonosov Gold Medal "for fundamental research in the fields of interaction of complex nuclei and experimental evidence of existence of an 'island of stability' for superheavy elements"
In early 2016 it was speculated by science writers and bloggers that one of the super-heavy elements would be named oganessium or oganesson. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry announced in November 2016 that element 118 would be named oganesson to honor Oganessian. It was first observed in 2002 at JINR, by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. Headed by Oganessian, the team included American scientists of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California. Prior to this announcement, a dozen elements had been named after people, but of those, only seaborgium was likewise named while its namesake was alive. As Seaborg died in 1999, Oganessian is the only currently living namesake of an element.
