Yuri Moiseyevich Kagan (born 6.07.1928) is a Soviet theoretical physicist and a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1970). He was born in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (1950). Since 1956 he has worked at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and since 1962 he has also been professor at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.
His main research concerned the kinetic theory of gases, the theory of the condensed state and the interaction of radiation with matter. He developed a kinetic theory of gases with rotational degrees of freedom and a theory of the Senftleben effect and related phenomena. He constructed a microscopic theory of the metallic state and developed theories of irregular crystals and of kinetic phenomena in metals, and theories of quantum diffusion in crystals and of the quantum kinetics of phase transitions. He predicted the suppression of a nuclear reaction in perfect crystals (USSR State Prize, 1976). He developed the quantum theory of channelling, a general dynamical theory of the diffraction of nuclear radiation in crystals and a theory of the Mössbauer effect.
M. V. Lomonosov Prize (1975).