In Memory Of Vladimir Evgen'Evich Fortov

renowned scientist and laureate of many prestigious prizes and honorary titles. He made a major contribution to the physics of extreme states of matter and high energy densities, nonideal plasmas, shock and detonation waves, thermophysics, chemical physics, space research, and electric power, as well as several other realms of physics and technology (including defense programs). Fortov was president of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) from 2013 to 2017, a full commander of the Order for Services to the Fatherland, a courageous citizen, and a man with an open heart. January 23, 2021 would have been his 75th birthday. It was not to be. Vladimir Evgen'evich passed away on November 29, 2020. Hismighty body, strong by nature, could not cope with consequences of COVID. And it seemed to all those who knew Vladimir Evgen'evich that no obstacle existed in the world that he could not surmount. Fortov was born in the town of Noginsk,MoscowRegion less than a year after the victory in the Great Patriotic War into the family of air force engineer-lieutenant colonel Evgenii Viktorovich and school teacher Galina Ivanovna Fortov. Inspired by heroic feats of their parents' generation, children in those times aspired to grandiose deeds. Vladimir's childhood and school years were spent near a military airfield (because of his father's profession), which could not but have influenced the course of his life. In 1962, on finishing school at age 16, he enrolled in the Department of Aerophysics and Space Research of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), where stars of Russian science were teaching and whom Vladimir Evgen'evich always remembered with deep respect and gratitude. While still a secondyear student, Vladimir began his research work in the primary department of the Scientific Research Institute of Thermal Processes (now the M V Keldysh State Research Center) under the supervision of VMIevlev, a correspondingmember of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1968, V E Fortov graduated from the institute with distinction in Thermodynamics and Aerodynamics and became a post-graduate student at the MIPT Department of Physical mechanics. In 1971, he defended his candidate thesis, entitled ``Thermophysics of Nuclear Rocket Engines'', ahead of schedule, and was to be sent to work in the far east. However, a fortuitous meeting with academician Ya B Zel'dovich, who had listened closely to V E Fortov's talk at a conference, radically changed the life of the young scientist: Yakov Borisovich put in a good word about him to the Nobel Prize winner N N Semenov. And so, in 1971, with Ya B Zel'dovich's magic touch, Fortov began working in the Chernogolovka Branch of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. There, he engaged in investigations in the field of nonideal plasma physics and extreme states of matter. The results underlay his doctoral thesis, ``Nonideal Plasma Investigations Using Dynamic Methods,'' which he defended in 1976, only five years after he started his research. This subject remained at the center of Fortov's attention his whole life. V E Fortov was deeply involved in studies of the mechanics of deformation and damage to materials at high pressures and temperatures, as well as at high deformation rates. Beginning in the 1980s, he supervised experimental and theoretical research into the mechanical properties of materials and damaging elements, barriers, and structures of special hardware. When in the early 1980s a team of scientists headed by academician R Z Sagdeev started implementing the Vega International Space Program aimed at studying Halley's comet, Fortov's experience, gained in the investigation of high-speed impact, came to be in great demand. The protection of the Vega spacecraft from meteorites and a system of dust impact analyzers successfully fulfilled their task, and the computer codes used then were later adapted for studying the problem of asteroid hazards. So, in early 1994, the team Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk 191 (1) 111 ± 112 (2021) Translated by M V Tsaplina PERSONALIA PACS number: 01.60.+q