Semyon Yakovlevich Braude

Semyon Yakovlevich Braude was born in 1911 in the city of Poltava, Ukraine, into the family of a civil servant, which afforded him access to an excellent education. He completed secondary school ahead of schedule at the age of fifteen (1926). Owing to his young age, he was initially unable to enroll at Kharkiv University and only in September 1928 became a student of the Faculty of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics of Kharkiv University (now V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University). He graduated successfully in 1932. From 1933 onwards, S. Ya. Braude worked actively in the laboratories of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (UFTI).

In 1937, at the age of twenty-six, Semyon Braude defended his Candidate of Sciences (equivalent of PhD) thesis. In the same year, the laboratory headed by Professor Abram A. Slutskin - Braude's MSc supervisor - was commissioned to develop a radar system, a task that was successfully completed in 1938. Furthermore, the scientific staff of the UFTI laboratory created the world's first three-coordinate radar. From August 1941, the experimental Kharkiv anti-aircraft radar was deployed in the defence of Moscow during the Second World War.

In the autumn of 1941, Semyon Yakovlevich was evacuated to Central Asia as part of the UFTI team. In 1944, the team returned to Kharkiv. His intensive scientific activity during the pre-war and wartime periods enabled him to defend his doctoral dissertation (equivalent of habilitation) in April 1943. Thereafter, he was able to determine independently the direction of his scientific research. Immediately after the Second World War, he became the founder of a new scientific discipline that later came to be known as radio oceanography.

In the post-war years, S. Ya. Braude combined scientific research with teaching (1946-1956) as a professor at the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. His teaching activities enabled him to identify and mentor talented students for future collaborative research. From their student years, Anatoly Vladimirovich Men and Leonid Grigoryevich Sodin - later Professors and laureates of USSR State Prizes - became his lifelong collaborators.

In 1955, the Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics was established. At this institute, Semyon Yakovlevich Braude served as Deputy Director for Science. Together with Academician Nikolai Pavlovich Barabashev, he secured the allocation of a large land area totalling 135 hectares. On this site, in the early 1960s, a team led by Semyon Braude constructed several first-generation radio telescopes. The UTR-2 radio telescope (Ukrainian T-shaped Radio Telescope of the second generation; 8-32 MHz) and the subsequent URAN-1-URAN-4 radio interferometric network (1982-1993) became the crowning achievements of Semyon Yakovlevich Braude and the entire team of radio astronomers he headed for many years.

Since 1971, the UTR-2 has operated successfully for more than fifty years, undergoing several major modernisations. In 1977, the team of its creators was awarded the USSR State Prize. In 1968, prior to the completion of the UTR-2, Semyon Yakovlevich Braude was elected a Full Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

In 1985, the Radio Astronomy Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was established, and Semyon Braude and his team of radio astronomers joined this new institute. He became the founder of the world-renowned school of decametre radio astronomy, while Ukrainian decametre radio telescopes became an integral part of the global low-frequency radio astronomy network.

The contribution of Semyon Yakovlevich Braude to radio astronomy is difficult to overestimate. Over more than half a century, Semyon Braude, together with his colleagues and students, made pioneering contributions across a wide range of areas in radio astronomy. These included the discovery of radio recombination lines of highly excited interstellar hydrogen and carbon atoms with principal quantum numbers up to 1000; surveys of extragalactic radio sources at record-low frequencies for Earth-based observations (10-25 MHz); studies of the fine spectral and temporal structures of solar and Jovian radio emission; long-wavelength investigations of pulsars and transient sources; and the mapping of radio emission from nebulae and supernova remnants.

Semyon Yakovlevich Braude was the recipient of numerous state honours and awards, including:

• Stalin Prize (Third Class, 1952) for research in applied technology
• Gold A. S. Popov Medal of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1983)
• State Prize of Ukraine (1997)
• Three Orders of the Red Banner of Labour (USSR; 1954, 1971, 1981)
• Full Knight of the Order of Merit of Ukraine (1995, 1998, 2001)
• Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War" (USSR, 1945)

A crater near the south pole on the far side of the Moon bears the name Braude. The UTR-2 Observatory is named in honour of Academician Semyon Ya. Braude, and a prize bearing his name has been established by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Semyon Yakovlevich Braude passed away in 2003 at the age of ninety-two. He lived a remarkable and productive life, leaving a lasting mark on science and on the destinies of many generations of his students.