cist, DSc in physics and mathematics, a professor of Moscow State University, who was very well known in the field of ion interaction with solid surfaces, died on September 27, 1999. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Molchanov was born on November 2, 1930 in the village of Ivo|̄lovo in the NovoPetrovks district of the Moscow region, in the family of a school teacher. He enrolled in the physics faculty of the M V Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) in 1948. Molchanov did his diploma research work under the guidance of I L Fabelinski|̄. V AMolchanov always regarded I L Fabelinski|̄ as his mentor in physics and held him in the greatest respect and gratitude until the very end. After graduating from the university, V A Molchanov worked for two years at the chair of general physics of the MSU physics faculty, where he took part in creating a number of optics practical studies for students. In 1955 L A Artsimovich created the chair of atomic physics and electronic phenomena in the MSU physics faculty. On Artsimovich's request, Molchanov was transferred to this new chair. Task number one was to create the atomic physics laboratory work, then start colloquia and research work. V A Molchanov played a very active role in this effort. With Artsimovich's invaluable support and huge help from the mechanical and electrical workshops of the Department of Plasma Research of LIPAN (the director of which was Artsimovich), Molchanov created a setup for the study of ion beam interactions with solids at the Institute of Nuclear Physics MSU (INP MSU), one of the first in the world (the earlier studies were done typically in gas discharge). It was very early days for the physics of atomic collisions at solid surfaces, so V A Molchanov and a number of other physicists in the USSR and other countries found themselves creating the field almost from scratch. The main purpose of his work was to identify and investigate in detail the mechanisms of the phenomena caused by ion bombardment of solid surfaces treated as both quasi-elementary phenomena (such as ion scattering by the solid surfaces and emission of fast recoils) and as essentially non-elementary processes (such as sputtering and emission of secondary electrons, ions and photons). One of the results of work on ion-electron emission was the discovery, together with E S Mashkova, D D Odintsov, V M Chicherov, V G Telkovski|̄, in 1960 of the phenomenon of the anisotropy of ion-induced electron emission of monocrystals 2. This phenomenon consists in a sharp decrease in the number of electrons emitted from a crystal being bombarded by ions when the direction of bombardment coincides with the crystallographic axes of the crystal. The anisotropy of the ion ± electron emission proved to be one of the first among the discovered directional effects of interaction between atomic particles and crystals; together with a number of other orientational effects, including channeling (1963), this anisotropy effect formed the basis of a new field of solid state physics Ð the radiation physics of ordered media. L A Artsimovich had a very high opinion of V AMolchanov's experimental wizardry and regarded his as one of the very few top experimenters. V A Molchanov's speed of research was overwhelming; his capacity for work

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