In Memoriam: Valeri Tcherniatine

Valeri Tcherniatine enlarge

Valeri Tcherniatine

Valeri Tcherniatine, a physicist in Brookhaven Lab’s Physics Department, died on March 2, 2013. He was 73.

Tcherniatine first worked at the Lab from February 27 until August 30, 1991 as a visiting physicist from Moscow Physical Engineering Institute. He returned on February 27, 1992, again as a visiting physicist. He joined the Lab as a senior research associate on February 26, 1995, and became a physicist on February 26, 1998, physics associate I on October 1, 2002, and senior physics associate on December 1, 2010.

Tcherniatine worked on the ATLAS experiment for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Europe since 1994, when Brookhaven Lab joined the collaboration. A leading expert in gaseous detectors for particle physics experiments, Tcherniatine had a major role in developing cathode strip chamber detectors that were built at Brookhaven. He also was an important collaborator for the monitored drift tube and resistive plate chamber, which are all used to measure particles called muons with the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer. Muons are one of the key subatomic particles measured from collisions at the LHC for new clues into the origin of mass, the nature of dark matter, and other fundamental mysteries of the universe.

In recent years, Valeri’s expertise in the physics of gaseous detectors was a great asset in developing concepts for liquid helium and neon Time Projection Chambers exploiting charge transport in electron bubbles for future neutrino experiments.

“Colleagues have said that Valeri was a versatile detector expert and avid experimentalist with a wide range of knowledge that he was always more than willing to share—I couldn’t agree more and we miss him,” said Deputy Chair of the Lab’s Physics Department and past U.S. ATLAS Deputy Operations Program Manager Howard Gordon.

Tcherniatine was a resident of Middle Island. He is survived by his wife Olha, his son Aleksandr, and step-daughter Yulia.

Tags: personnel

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