1. Viktor Ambartsumian subsequently moved to Soviet Armenia, where he founded the Byurakan Observatory in 1946.
91 Facts About Viktor Ambartsumian
1. 2.
Viktor Ambartsumian began retiring from the various positions he held only from the age of 80.
3.
Viktor Ambartsumian died at his house in Byurakan and was buried on the grounds of the observatory.
4.
Viktor Ambartsumian was awarded the title of National Hero of Armenia in 1994.
5.
Viktor Ambartsumian's ancestors had moved from Diyadin, what is Turkey, to the southern shores of Lake Sevan in 1830, in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War.
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Viktor Ambartsumian was a writer and translator and notably translated Homer's Iliad into Armenian from Classical Greek.
7.
Viktor Ambartsumian was the secretary, while Hovhannes Tumanyan, the famed poet, served as its president.
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Viktor Ambartsumian developed an early interest in mathematics and was able to multiply by the age of 4.
9.
In 1924 Viktor Ambartsumian delivered a lecture at Yerevan State University about the theory of relativity.
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Viktor Ambartsumian met Ashot Hovhannisyan and Alexander Miasnikian, Armenia's communist leaders.
11.
In 1924 Viktor Ambartsumian moved to Leningrad, where he began attending the Herzen Pedagogical Institute.
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At university, Viktor Ambartsumian was interested in both astronomy and mathematics.
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Viktor Ambartsumian studied alongside other major Soviet scientists such as Lev Landau, Sergei Sobolev, Sergey Khristianovich and George Gamow.
14.
In 1931 Viktor Ambartsumian began reading the first course on theoretical astrophysics in the Soviet Union.
15.
Between 1939 and 1941 Viktor Ambartsumian was the director of the Astronomical Observatory of LSU.
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Viktor Ambartsumian was simultaneously prorector of the university.
17.
Viktor Ambartsumian led the evacuation of part of the faculty of Leningrad State University to Elabuga, Tatarstan in 1941, after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
18.
In 1943 Viktor Ambartsumian moved with his family to Yerevan, Soviet Armenia, where he lived until the end of his life.
19.
Viktor Ambartsumian served as vice president of the academy until 1947 and as president from 1947 to 1993.
20.
Since 1943 Viktor Ambartsumian served as director of the Yerevan Astronomical Observatory.
21.
Viktor Ambartsumian had secured a nine-inch telescope from Leningrad for the observatory.
22.
Viktor Ambartsumian was named professor of astrophysics at YSU in 1947.
23.
Viktor Ambartsumian served as chair of the department until 1994.
24.
In 1965 Viktor Ambartsumian founded the journal Astrofizika, which has been published by the Armenian Academy of Sciences since then.
25.
Viktor Ambartsumian initially lived at a house in the village of Byurakan then build a house within the observatory grounds with the money awarded with the 1950 Stalin Prize.
26.
Viktor Ambartsumian directed the Byurakan Observatory until 1988 and was named its honorary director that year.
27.
In 1961 Viktor Ambartsumian supervised the establishment of an astrophysical station of Leningrad State University, his alma mater, within the grounds of the Byurakan Observatory.
28.
Viktor Ambartsumian is best known for having discovered stellar associations and predicted activity of galactic nuclei.
29.
In 1947 Viktor Ambartsumian discovered stellar associations, a new type of stellar system, which led to the conclusion that star formation continues to take place in the Milky Way galaxy.
30.
Viktor Ambartsumian's discovery was based on his observation of stars of O and B spectral types and T Tauri and flare stars that cluster very loosely.
31.
Viktor Ambartsumian found that clusters of galaxies are unstable and that galaxy formation is still ongoing.
32.
Viktor Ambartsumian developed and summarized his views on activity of galaxies in the 1960s.
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Viktor Ambartsumian was the first or one of the first to study stellar radiation transfer in gaseous nebulae.
34.
Viktor Ambartsumian devised techniques for calculating the rates of star cluster decay and the time needed to reach statistical equilibrium in double star systems.
35.
Viktor Ambartsumian made contributions to mathematics, most notably with his 1929 paper in Zeitschrift fur Physik, where he first introduced the inverse Sturm-Liouville problem.
36.
Viktor Ambartsumian had made an independent discovery of Radon's problem in 1936.
37.
Viktor Ambartsumian did so in a three dimensional velocity space rather than ordinary space and gave the solution in two and three dimensions.
38.
Viktor Ambartsumian was elected corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1939 and full member in 1953.
39.
Viktor Ambartsumian chaired the Academy's Joint Coordinating Scientific Council on astronomy, which was responsible for the priorities and all major decisions in all of astronomy.
40.
Viktor Ambartsumian was chairman of the academy's commissions on astronomy and cosmogony.
41.
From 1944 to 1979 Viktor Ambartsumian was a member of the editorial board of Astronomicheskii zhurnal, the Soviet Union's main astronomy journal.
42.
Viktor Ambartsumian initially served as vice president and in 1947 he became the academy's second president, serving for 46 years until 1993.
43.
When he stepped down, Viktor Ambartsumian was declared honorary president of the academy.
44.
Viktor Ambartsumian actively promoted the natural and exact sciences, including physics and mathematics, radioelectronics, chemistry, mechanics and engineering.
45.
Artashes Shahinian noted that Viktor Ambartsumian played a significant role in the development of the physical and mathematical sciences.
46.
Viktor Ambartsumian played an instrumental role in the establishment and development of the Yerevan Scientific Research Institute of Mathematical Machines in 1956, popularly known as the "Mergelyan Institute" after its first director, mathematician Sergey Mergelyan.
47.
In 1971 Viktor Ambartsumian persuaded him to return to Armenia from Moscow and become vice president of the Armenian Academy of Sciences.
48.
Some academicians called for a revote, but Viktor Ambartsumian rejected any such attempts.
49.
Viktor Ambartsumian was a member of the International Astronomical Union since 1946.
50.
Viktor Ambartsumian served as vice-president of the IAU from 1948 to 1955, then as president from 1961 to 1964.
51.
Viktor Ambartsumian served as president of the International Council of Scientific Unions between 1968 and 1972, being elected twice for two-year terms in 1968 and 1970.
52.
Viktor Ambartsumian was the first individual from the Eastern bloc to be elected to that post.
53.
Viktor Ambartsumian made "philosophical excursions", and published several books and articles on philosophy, including Philosophical Questions About the Science of the Universe.
54.
Viktor Ambartsumian became a member of the administration of the Philosophical Society of the Soviet Union when it was established in 1971.
55.
Viktor Ambartsumian was an atheist and believed that science and religion are irreconcilable.
56.
Viktor Ambartsumian felt that Christianity has been important in preserving Armenian identity.
57.
Viktor Ambartsumian had friendly relations with Vazgen I, the long-time head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, especially since at least the late 1980s.
58.
In 1969 Viktor Ambartsumian visited San Lazzaro degli Armeni in Venice, home of the Armenian Catholic congregation of the Mekhitarists and was declared an honorary member of its academy.
59.
Viktor Ambartsumian accepted and followed Marxist-Leninist philosophy and staunchly promoted dialectical materialism and projected it on his astrophysical interpretations.
60.
Viktor Ambartsumian is often referred to as a politician; Donald Lynden-Bell called him a skillful one.
61.
McCutcheon noted that Viktor Ambartsumian's life was "shaped and directed by the Soviet system" and he was politically loyal to the Soviet regime.
62.
Viktor Ambartsumian jointed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1940.
63.
Viktor Ambartsumian was a member of the Supreme Soviet from 1950 to 1989.
64.
Viktor Ambartsumian was a delegate to the 19th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th congresses of the CPSU.
65.
Viktor Ambartsumian often signed open letters in support of the official line of the Soviet authorities.
66.
Viktor Ambartsumian insisted all internal communication of the Armenian Academy of Sciences be done in Armenian when he became president in 1947.
67.
Viktor Ambartsumian played a role in the Karabakh movement and was vocal in the initial phase of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
68.
In November 1989, the Viktor Ambartsumian-led Armenian Academy of Sciences issued a statement protesting the decision of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to return Nagorno-Karabakh under the direct control of Soviet Azerbaijan.
69.
Viktor Ambartsumian insisted that Gorbachev had violated the Soviet constitution by keeping Nagorno-Karabakh under direct rule from Moscow.
70.
Viktor Ambartsumian ended it after 9 days only when Catholicos Vazgen I persuaded him to do so.
71.
Viktor Ambartsumian appreciated independent Armenia, but reminded Armenians that they will be paying a high price for it.
72.
When Viktor Ambartsumian was referred to by foreigners as a Russian scientist, he corrected them by saying he was Armenian.
73.
Between 1946 and 1996 Viktor Ambartsumian mostly divided his time between Yerevan and Byurakan.
74.
Viktor Ambartsumian built himself a house within the Byurakan Observatory with the award money that came with his second Stalin Prize in 1950.
75.
In 1930 or 1931 Viktor Ambartsumian married Vera Fyodorovna, an ethnic Russian, who was the niece and the adopted daughter of Pelageya Shajn, the wife of Grigory Shajn, both Russian astronomers.
76.
Viktor Ambartsumian was an English teacher who taught him to read his papers in English when he visited the US and Britain.
77.
Viktor Ambartsumian was deeply depressed by her death in 1995.
78.
Viktor Ambartsumian began retiring from the various positions he held in 1988, at 80.
79.
Viktor Ambartsumian left the position of the director of the Byurakan Observatory that year.
80.
Viktor Ambartsumian died at his Byurakan house on August 12,1996, a month short of his 88th birthday.
81.
Viktor Ambartsumian was buried at the observatory grounds, next to his wife and parents.
82.
Viktor Ambartsumian's funeral was attended by thousands of people, including Armenia's president Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
83.
Viktor Ambartsumian's house was inaugurated as a museum in August 1998.
84.
Viktor Ambartsumian was one of the 20th century's leading astrophysicists and astronomers.
85.
Viktor Ambartsumian was the leading astronomer of the Soviet Union and is universally recognized as the founder of the Soviet school of theoretical astrophysics.
86.
Viktor Ambartsumian's Knot is a small tidal dwarf galaxy located in NGC 3561 in the constellation Ursa Major.
87.
In 2009 a 3.2-metre bronze statue of Viktor Ambartsumian was unveiled in Yerevan at the park around the Yerevan Observatory in attendance of President Serzh Sargsyan and other officials.
88.
Busts of Viktor Ambartsumian stand at the Byurakan Observatory, the city of Vardenis, and at the central campus of Yerevan State University.
89.
Viktor Ambartsumian was elected honorary and foreign member of 28 Academies of Sciences, including:.
90.
Viktor Ambartsumian received honorary doctorates from several universities: Australian National University, University of Paris, University of Liege, Charles University in Prague, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, National University of La Plata.
91.
Viktor Ambartsumian served as editor and senior author of the 1952 book Teoreticheskaia Astrofizika.