Gersh Itskovich (Andrei Mikhailovich) Budker (1.05.1918-4.07.1977) was a Soviet physicist and an academician (1964; corresponding member 1958). He was born in the village of Murafa in Vinnitsa region. He graduated from Moscow University (1941). In 1945 — 57 he worked at the I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and from 1958 he was director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences and professor at Novosibirsk University.
His main research was in the fields of the theory of nuclear reactors, the theory and design of accelerators, plasma physics and the problem of controlled thermonuclear fusion. He carried out a series of studies of the theory of the finite uranium-graphite lattice and of the fundamentals of the kinetics and control of nuclear reactors, and of the theory of cyclic accelerators (USSR State Prize, 1951).
He carried out a series of studies of the physics of relativistic plasma, in particular constructing the theory of the relativistic kinetic equation, and predicted theoretically the formation from relativistic electrons and ions of the so-called stabilised electron beam. In 1952 (independently of R. Post) he proposed the idea of using open magnetic traps with magnetic mirrors to confine high-temperature plasma.
He was the creator of a new line of research in experimental high-energy physics — the colliding-beam method. Under his direction accelerators working on colliding electron-electron and electron-positron beams were brought into operation in Novosibirsk
(VEP-1, VEPP-2, VEPP-2M, VEPP-3), a proton-antiproton storage ring was under construction, and research on elementary-particle physics was carried out on them (Lenin Prize, 1967). He proposed an effective method of damping incoherent oscillations in beams of heavy particles, for which radiation damping is practically absent (the electron-cooling method), and a method of charge-exchange injection. He put forward a new method of thermally insulating hot plasma. On Budker's ideas, powerful generators of pulsed relativistic beams for heating plasma were built at the Institute of Nuclear Physics, and a series of electron accelerators for the radiation processing of materials was developed.
He created a school of physicists.