Yuri Trutnev (scientist)


Yuri Alexeyevich Trutnev is a Russian theoretical physicist, nuclear engineer and Emeritus Professor of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI. He worked on the RDS-37, the RDS-220 and many other nuclear charges.

Career

He graduated from the Physics department of the Leningrad State University. In 1951, he was sent to Arzamas-16. The second and third stages of the RDS-220 were designed principally by Trutnev and Babayev. In 1964, he was appointed head of his department and deputy head of the sector. He was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences the same year. The following year he became head of the sector and in 1966 deputy supervisor. In 1978, he became first deputy supervisor and head of the theoretical department. He became an Academician of the RAS in 1991. From 1993 to 1999, he was first deputy supervisor of VNIIEF.
Trutnev began development of nuclear devices for industrial civilian purposes such as reservoir creation and gas field intensification, and devices which released very low amounts of ionising radiation. Yevgeny Avrorin described Trutnev producing the first "clean" nuclear charge, "a purely thermonuclear reaction" from a solid compound.
Employees at Arzamas-16, including Trutnev, were upset that on a visit by Edward Teller and Siegfried S. Hecker to Russia after the break-up of the U.S.S.R., each was photographed in front of a model of the RDS-220 alongside scientists in Snezhinsk. Trutnev insisted that a new photograph be taken of Hecker at VNIIEF in front of a similar model, as it was he and his colleagues at VNIIEF in Sarov who designed the device.
Trutnev is the editor-in-chief of the Atomic Science and Technology journal and deputy editor-in-chief of the International Scientific Journal for Alternative Energy and Ecology. He was one of the RAS members who were critical of proposed administrative changes to the RAS by the Russian state in 2013, changes which included the transfer of academic institutions and property

Awards