Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov (born November 10, 1935 in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
) is a
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
(and former
SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
)
theoretical astrophysicistAstrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects such as galaxies, stars, planets, exoplanets, and the interstellar medium, as well as their...
and
cosmologistPhysical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of our universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. Cosmology involves itself with studying the motions of the celestial bodies and the first cause....
.
Novikov formulated the
Novikov self-consistency principleThe Novikov self-consistency principle, also known as the Novikov self-consistency conjecture, is a principle developed by Dr. Igor Novikov in the mid-1980s to solve the problem of paradoxes in time travel, which is theoretically permitted in certain solutions of general relativity...
in the mid-1980s, an important contribution to the theory of
time travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to...
.
Novikov gained his Ph. D in astrophysics in 1965 and Doctoral Degree in astrophysics in 1970. From 1974 to 1990 he was head of the Department of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Space Research Institute in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
.
Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov (born November 10, 1935 in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
) is a
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
(and former
SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
)
theoretical astrophysicistAstrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects such as galaxies, stars, planets, exoplanets, and the interstellar medium, as well as their...
and
cosmologistPhysical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of our universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. Cosmology involves itself with studying the motions of the celestial bodies and the first cause....
.
Novikov formulated the
Novikov self-consistency principleThe Novikov self-consistency principle, also known as the Novikov self-consistency conjecture, is a principle developed by Dr. Igor Novikov in the mid-1980s to solve the problem of paradoxes in time travel, which is theoretically permitted in certain solutions of general relativity...
in the mid-1980s, an important contribution to the theory of
time travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to...
.
Novikov gained his Ph. D in astrophysics in 1965 and Doctoral Degree in astrophysics in 1970. From 1974 to 1990 he was head of the Department of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Space Research Institute in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
. Before 1991 he was head of the Department of Theoretical Astrophysics at the
Lebedev Physical InstituteThe Lebedev Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, situated in Moscow, is one of the leading Russian research institutes specializing in physics. It is also one of the oldest research institutions in Russia: its history dates back to a collection of physics equipment established by...
in Moscow and has been professor at Moscow State University. Since 1994 has been director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center (TAC) of the
University of CopenhagenThe University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
,
DenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
. He is currently also a professor of
astrophysicsAstrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects such as galaxies, stars, planets, exoplanets, and the interstellar medium, as well as their...
at the Observatory of the University of Copenhagen, where he has been since 1991. From 1998 he is a Fellow of the
Royal Astronomical SocietyThe Royal Astronomical Society is a learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research . It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV...
.
Novikov is married to Eleonora Kotok and has two children, Elena and Dmitry. His father disappeared under
StalinJoseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953...
and his mother spent years in the
gulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
. He eventually came under the wing of
Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovichYakov Borisovich Zel'dovich was a prolific Soviet physicist. He played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, and made important contributions to the fields of adsorption and catalysis, shock waves, nuclear physics, particle physics, astrophysics,...
.
Publications
He wrote several popular books with a huge self-evident fascination, similar to ones of
Stephen HawkingStephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is a British theoretical physicist. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes...
:
- Black Holes and the Universe, (translated by Vitaly I. Kisin, Cambridge University Press 1995)
- The River of Time, (translated by Vitaly I. Kisin, Cambridge University Press 1998, 2001)
- Il ritmo del tempo, Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 2006
He has authored or co-authored 15 books on cosmology and astrophysics, and wrote, with Alexander S. Sharov, a biography of
Edwin HubbleEdwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer. He profoundly changed our understanding of the universe by demonstrating the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way. He also discovered that the degree of redshift observed in light coming from a galaxy increased in proportion to the...
,
E. Hubble, Life and Work (Cambridge University Press 1992).