Isaak Konstantinovich Kikoin (March 28, 1908, Žagarė

Žagare

Žagarė is a city located in the Joniškis district, northern Lithuania, close to the border with Latvia. It has a population of about 2,000.-Names:Foreign renderings of the name include: , , .-History:The foundation of Žagarė dates back to the 12th century...

, Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

 - December 28, 1984, Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, USSR) was a Soviet physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 and academic. He was awarded the Stalin/Lenin Prize

USSR State Prize

The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....

 six times (1942, 1951, 1953, 1959, 1967, 1980), named a Hero of Socialist Labor

Hero of Socialist Labor

Hero of Socialist Labour was an honorary title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. It was the highest degree of distinction for exceptional achievements in national economy and culture...

 (1951), and was a recipient of the Kurchatov Medal

Kurchatov Medal

The Kurchatov Medal, or the Gold Medal in honour of Igor Kurchatov is an award given for outstanding achievements in nuclear physics and in the field of nuclear energy...

 (1971).

Kikoin was with Igor Kurchatov

Igor Kurchatov

Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov , was a Soviet nuclear physicist who is widely known as the director of the Soviet atomic bomb project. Along with Georgy Flyorov and Andrei Sakharov, Kurchatov is widely remembered and dubbed as the "father of the Soviet atomic bomb" for his directorial role in the...

 as one of the founders of the Kurchatov Atomic Energy Institute

Kurchatov Institute

The Kurchatov Institute is Russia's leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear energy. In the Soviet Union it was known as I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy , abbreviated KIAE . It is named after Igor Kurchatov....

, which developed the first Soviet nuclear reactor

Nuclear reactor

A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...

 in 1946. This was the lead-in to the Soviet atomic bomb project

Soviet atomic bomb project

The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb , was a clandestine research and development program began during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project...

 with the first atomic bomb test taking place in 1949.

In 1970, Kikoin (jointly with Kolmogorov) started issuing Kvant magazine, a popular science magazine in physics and mathematics for school students and teachers.