In Memory of Yan Kucherov

摘要

Cold fusion researcher Dr. Yan R. Kucherov passed away on December 4, 2011 at the age of 60, from pancreatic cancer. Kucherov was born February 23, 1951 in Kharkov, Russia. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in solid state physics and nuclear physics from the Moscow Physics Engineering Institute in 1975 and his Ph.D from SIA Luch in 1984. From 1975 to 1993 Kucherov conducted research on accelerated crystal growth, plasma physics and cold fusion at SIA Luch Laboratory. His collaborator, Irina Sawatimova, recalled, "When I met Yan in 1989 he was a brilliant physicist and a well-respected man of great erudition." She noted that in the days following the Fleischmann-Pons announcement in March 1989, her colleague V.A. Romodanov questioned whether Russian scientists would "risk pursuing this line of research." She told him that Yan Kucherov would work with her. "And at this very moment I received a phone call," Sawatimova said. "It was Yan with a request to show him my installation. I laughed, because he called just at the moment when I was pronouncing his name." In the following week, Sawatimova, Kucherov and Alexander Karabut conducted their first experiments "using very simple detectors for neutron and gammaemissions measurements." Sawatimova said they obtained "very interesting results" and "Yan's expertise and very deep knowledge of fundamental physics helped us to evaluate and interpret the obtained data correctly." They went on to publish numerous key papers in the field.