On August 30, 2007, Gennadii Smirnov’s friends and colleagues celebrated his 70 th birthday. During a research career spanning more than 40 years, Gennadii Smirnov has made an outstanding contribution to the fields of Mössbauer spectroscopy and gamma-optics. Different from many of us, his interest has always focused on the Coherence of nuclear resonant scattering. This was a field that in earlier times was often considered an exotic branch of Mössbauer spectroscopy. Now, thanks to the Coherence-targeted contributions of Gennadii Smirnov and the work of other groups, this branch of the field has become a flourishing tree of synchrotron-radiation-based methods of Mössbauer spectroscopy. At the 70th birthday of Gennadii Smirnov, we wish him many happy returns of the day, new brilliant inspirations, and new exciting experiments together with his friends all over the world.

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Sh. Sh. Bashkirov Celebrates 80^th Birthday

Colleagues, friends, and students congratulate Professor Sh. Sh. Bashkirov, well-known expert in the field of Mössbauer spectroscopy, on his 80th birthday. Shamil’ Shagivaleevich Bashkirov was born on January 1, 1927, in the former USSR. He received his Master’s Degree in Theoretical Physics from Kazan State University in 1951. Shamil Shagivaleevich started his scientific work in the internationally recognized research group of Professor S. A. Al’tshuler in the field of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.

In the early 1960s, being a known expert in the area of Magnetic Resonance and Paramagnetic Relaxation, Sh. Sh. Bashkirov organized the Mössbauer spectroscopy laboratory at Kazan State University, one of the first in the Soviet Union. The Lab soon became widely known for its research and evolved into the Department of Solid State Physics (1969). Shamil’ Shagivaleevich was the first Chair of this Department, and served in this capacity until 1992. The Department’s graduates have worked in numerous scientific research and industrial fields (nuclear physical methods, X-ray, Mössbauer spectroscopy, radiation ecology, etc.).

Over the years, the subjects of Professor Bashkirov’s scientific interest were Microstructure of Magnetic Materials and Theory of Mössbauer Spectra. The results of this research have been published in more that 340 scientific articles and in a book entitled “Magnetic Microstructure of Ferrites,” which was written in cooperation with his two former Ph.D. students. Altogether, 26 of his former students have received Ph.D. degrees working under Professor Bashkirov’s leadership. He always has enjoyed working with graduate students as well. Shamil’ Shagivaleevich is still very active in this area, lecturing a new generation of students.

Professor Bashkirov’s research contributions have been recognized by the Russian and international scientific communities. Sh. Sh. Bashkirov is a Distinguished Scientist of the Russian Federation, a member of RAS Council on Magnetism, Correspondent Member of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, and a Distinguished Professor of Kazan State University.