A distinguished Macedonian physicist, whose scientific career was bound to Serbia, Ratko Janev (1939-2019) passed away in Belgrade, on 31 December 2019. Janev was a member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and in the period 1972 – 1987 he was a principal research fellow at the Institute of Physics, Belgrade where he made significant scientific breakthroughs in multiple fields of atomic physics and left lasting scientific legacy.
Born in 1939, in Sandanski in Bulgaria, he finished a gymnasium in Skoplje in Northern Macedonia, and received his BSc in physics in Belgrade, where he also earned his PhD and continued his research career – in addition to the Institute of Physics, he also worked at Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences and at what was then the Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics.
Academician Janev was a leader in numerous researches and greatly contributed to the development of domestic atomic physics, leaving behind more than 300 scientific works, as well as numerous books and monographs. He was a member of various foreign academies, he also taught at Princeton, Oak Ridge and Brussels, and throughout his career he managed one of research programmes of controlled thermonuclear fusion at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Academician Ratko Janev was buried on 3 January, in New Bežanija cemetery in Belgrade.
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For more biographical details, you may read In memoriamprepared by physicist Tasko Grozdanov.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons / MANU