Boris Pavlovich Konstantinov (6.07.1910 —9.07.1969) was a Soviet physicist, an academician (1960; corresponding member 1953) and vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1967). He was born in St Petersburg. He studied at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. In 1926 — 30 and from 1940 he worked at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute (from 1943 as head of a laboratory, from 1963 as head of a department and in 1957 —67 as director), and in 1947 — 66 he was also head of a department at the Polytechnic Institute.
His research concerned acoustics, physical chemistry, the physics of isotopes, plasma physics and the problem of controlled thermonuclear fusion, astrophysics and holography. He was the first to pose and solve the question of the absorption of sound on reflection from a perfectly smooth, hard boundary, he created a wave theory of the reverberation of sound in closed rooms allowing for absorption at the walls, and he derived (1938) a formula for the mean pressure of an acoustic wave at normal incidence on a hard boundary. He created a theory of the oscillations of a jet and of jet transformation.
He studied the propagation of sound in a bounded medium allowing for thermal conductivity and viscosity, and non-linear effects in the propagation of sound in gases, in particular non-linear sound generation.
He carried out fundamental research on isotope effects and on methods of separating isotopes, and developed a number of methods of isotope separation, one of which became the basis for organising the industrial production of isotopes on a large scale. In particular, he gave a theoretical justification and an experimental proof (1946) of the possibility of separating isotopic ions by electromigration. He proposed methods of measuring the physical constants of materials, of the quantitative chemical analysis of various compounds and solutions and of the synthesis of chemical reactors, and various methods of purifying materials.
The work of his later years concerned questions of the physics of high-temperature plasma and controlled thermonuclear fusion, astrophysics and holography. He carried out physical and diagnostic research on the Alfa thermonuclear device, put forward the idea of corpuscular plasma diagnostics and developed methods of optical and microwave plasma diagnostics. In astrophysics he put forward a number of ideas connected with the problem of the charge symmetry of the Universe. He advanced the hypothesis that comets consist of antimatter. He carried out a number of studies of gamma rays with the help of satellites and balloons, laboratory modelling of cometary phenomena and observations of the collisions of micrometeors with satellites, as a result of which the claim that a dust belt exists around the Earth was disproved. Under Konstantinov's direction the properties of photographic, television and phototelevision holographic systems were studied and their parameters determined.
Hero of Socialist Labour (1954), the Lenin Prize (1958) and a USSR State Prize (1953). In 1959-69 he was editor-in-chief of the “Journal of Technical Physics”.