GINZBURG, VITALY LAZAREVICH

born Sept. 21 [Oct. 4, New Style], 1916, Moscow, Russia Soviet physicist and astrophysicist whose research ranged over superconductivity, theories of radio-wave propagation, radio astronomy, and the origin of cosmic rays. After graduating from Moscow University (1938), Ginzburg was appointed to the Lebedev Physical Institute of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences in 1940. He also taught at Gorky University (194568) and from 1968 at the Moscow Technical Institute of Physics. Ginzburg received the State Prize of the Soviet Union in 1953 and the Lenin Prize in 1966. One of Ginzburg's most significant theories was that cosmic radiation in interstellar space is produced not by thermal radiation but by the acceleration of high-energy electrons in magnetic fields, a process known as synchrotron radiation. In 1955 Ginzburg (with I.S. Shklovsky) discovered the first quantitative proof that the cosmic rays observed near the Earth originated in supernovae. Upon the discovery in 1969 of pulsars (believed to be neutron stars formed in supernova explosions), he expanded his theory to include pulsars as a related source of cosmic rays.