Mishik Airazatovich Kazaryan – a Russian-Armenian physicist specialising in laser physics and optics, the winner of the State Prize of the USSR in the field of science and technology, foreign member of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, member of the AM Prokhorov Academy of Engineering Sciences ‑ – died on 7 April,2020 due to COVID-19.
Kazaryan was a creator of the brightest repetitively pulsed laser in the visible region of the spectrum.
Kazaryan‘s father, Airazat G. Kazaryan Gabrielovich, was a physician, who worked at the Yerevan Medical Institute; his mother, Serik O. Vanuni, was an honoured Doctor of the Armenian SSR, and an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Markaryan Yerevan Maternity Hospital.
In 1970 Mishik Kazaryan graduated from the faculty of general and applied physics of Moscow Phycotechnical Institute in specialty “Optics and Spectroscopy.” Since 1970 he worked in P.N.Lebedev Physical Institute, and at the Department of Luminescence as the leading researcher. In 1975 he defended his PhD-thesis and in 1989 Dr. Hab. thesis. Mishik Kazaryan was conferred the professor title.
Prof. Kazaryan was one of the leading scientists working in the field of physics of gas lasers and active optical systems. He published a number of reports in leading scientific journals and encyclopedias, international patents, 11 books and 9 collections of selected articles in various international journals. He published more than 500 scientific papers. M.A.Kazaryan established a new method of exciting metal vapor lasers. He developed highly efficient lasers which are currently commercially available in Russia.
For his work on the physics of lasers and optical systems, MA Kazarian together with team members were awarded the State Prize of the USSR in the field of science and technology for 1980.
In 2003 he was elected a full member of the A.M.Prokhorov Academy of Engineering Sciences and in 2008 a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia.
Mishik Kazaryan was a supervisor of many international projects of ISTC and CRDF. He was the scientific secretary of the Scientific Council on Luminescence, a member of program and organizing committees, chairman of the sections at many national and international conferences.
Prof. Kazaryan was a member of the editorial board of international scientific journals “Lasers in Engineering”, “Alternative Energy and Ecology”, a member of the Council of the Euro-Asian Physical Society, a member of the “National Foundation of Science and Advanced Technologies” in Armenia. M.A.Kazaryan was awarded the A.I.Berg Medal (2013) and the N.N.Semenov Medal.
Kazaryan died on 7 April, 2020, in Moscow due to complications from COVID-19, 10 days after his wife had also died from COVID-19.