Following the departed

Anatoly Litvinenko 08.09.1948 - 12.08.2023

On 8 December, at the 76th year of his life, professor, Dr. Sci. in Physics and Mathematics, Head of the Department of Heavy Ion Physics of VBLHEP Anatoly Grigorievich Litvinenko suddenly died.

Anatoly Grigorievich's career started in 1966. From 1966 to 1969, he served in the Soviet Army and later, entered MEPhI, from which he graduated in 1975 with honors in theoretical nuclear physics. From 1975 to 1977, A.G.Litvinenko was a research intern and from 1977 to 1980, he studied at MEPhI graduate school. In 1980, he joined the High Energy Laboratory, later called the Laboratory of High Energy Physics, as a research trainee. Until now, he has been Head of a scientific sector. In 1985, A.G.Litvinenko defended his Candidate's thesis and in 2007 - his Ph.D. thesis. Since 2006, A.G.Litvinenko has taught part-time at the Dubna University in the Department of General Physics as a professor.

At JINR, A.G.Litvinenko developed physical research programmes, supervised and took part in simulation experiments. He participated in the preparation and implementation of measurements, processing and analysis of experimental data from the DISK and SPHERE facilities, operating on beams of the LHE accelerator complex. In 1995-2003, he headed the JINR collaboration with the universities of Nagoya and Miyazaki (Japan) to study the spin structure of the deuteron in experiments on beams of polarized deuterons at the LHE JINR accelerator complex.

From 2001 to 2010, Anatoly Grigorievich headed the JINR group in the PHENIX collaboration at the RHIC collider in the USA that studied the effect of jet quenching in heavy ion collisions. Within the framework of these investigations, together with employees of the University of Tsukubo (Japan), with his full participation, a 160-element airgel Cherenkov detector for this facility was developed and constructed.

Recently, Anatoly Grigorievich has participated in the development of the MPD facility at the NICA collider. He successfully worked on the determination of centrality in the collision of gold nuclei and the problem of determining luminosity at the NICA collider. A.G.Litvinenko was a co-author of about 300 scientific publications and as a member of teams of authors, was awarded JINR prizes three times.

We express our deepest sorrow and sincerely condole with the family and friends of Anatoly Grigorievich concerning the irreparable loss.

VBLHEP Directorate, colleagues and friends.