Yakov Borisovich Fainberg (born 7.09.1918) — Soviet physicist, an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1979). Born in Zolotonosha (now in the Cherkasy Region). Graduated from Kharkov University (1940). Since 1946 he has worked at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute (head of a department from 1972), and in 1949—72 he was an associate professor and then professor at Kharkov University.
His research was in the fields of the physics and technology of accelerators, plasma physics, plasma electronics and controlled thermonuclear fusion. He developed (1947) the theory of travelling-wave linear accelerators and the linear plasma betatron, and proposed new methods of acceleration, in particular alternating-phase focusing (1953) and acceleration by charge-density waves in a plasma and in uncompensated electron and proton beams (1956).
With A. I. Akhiezer he predicted (1948) the beam instability of a plasma. Together with his colleagues he detected it experimentally (1957 — 60), determined the main characteristics of the processes of beam instability, and proposed methods of controlling beam instabilities and a theory of them. Together with his colleagues he detected the plasma-beam discharge and beam heating of a plasma (1961). He was a co-author of the discovery of the effect of anomalously high resistance of a plasma at large current densities and of its turbulent heating (1961). Together with V. I. Veksler and G. I. Budker he began the collective methods of acceleration. He laid the foundations of relativistic and non-relativistic plasma electronics.