16 Facts About Iosif Shklovsky

Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist.

Iosif Shklovsky is remembered for his work in theoretical astrophysics 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 in 1966 as Intelligent Life in the Universe.

Iosif Shklovsky won the Lenin Prize in 1960 and the Bruce Medal in 1972.

Iosif Shklovsky was a Corresponding Member of Soviet Academy of Sciences since 1966.

Iosif Shklovsky was born in Hlukhiv, a city in the Ukrainian part of the Russian Empire, into a poor Ukrainian Jewish family.

In 1933 Iosif Shklovsky entered the Physico-Mathematical Faculty of the Moscow State University.

Iosif Shklovsky specialized in theoretical astrophysics and radio astronomy, as well as the Sun's corona, supernovae, and cosmic rays and their origins.

Iosif Shklovsky 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.

Iosif Shklovsky is noted especially for his suggestion that the radiation from the Crab Nebula is due to synchrotron radiation, in which unusually energetic electrons twist through magnetic fields at speeds close to that of light.

Iosif 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, Iosif Shklovsky examined the orbital motion of Mars's inner satellite Phobos.

Iosif Shklovsky 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 1967, before the discovery of pulsars, Iosif Shklovsky examined the X-ray and optical observations of Scorpius X-1 and correctly concluded that the radiation comes from an accreting neutron star.

In "Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon", Iosif Shklovsky recalled his visit to Philip Morrison, who in 1959 had co-authored with Cornell University 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, Cornell University's Frank Drake, Sagan, and Iosif Shklovsky, Iosif Shklovsky was quite aware of sharing his Jewish identity with Sagan.

Iosif Shklovsky was known for his sharp wit and extreme likability.