Mikhail Grigoryevich Meshcheryakov (born 17.09.1910) is a Soviet physicist and a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953). He was born in the village of Sambek (now Rostov Region). He graduated from Leningrad University (1936). From 1936—47 he worked at the Radium Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1940 head of a laboratory), in 1947 —53 he was deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and in 1953 —56 director of the Institute of Nuclear Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1956 he has been at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna), where in 1966 he organised and headed the Laboratory of Computing Technology and Automation. From 1953 —he has also been a professor at Moscow University. His research is concerned with nuclear physics, accelerator technology and elementary particle physics. In the range of cyclotron energies he detected a strong fluctuation of the cross-sections of the (n, γ) reaction with increasing mass number of the nucleus, and the capture of neutrons in the (n, p) reaction into deep-lying levels of nuclei. He directed the design and construction of the first synchrocyclotron in the USSR, for an energy of 680 MeV, which came into operation in 1949. He studied quantitatively, in the energy range 460 — 660 MeV, elastic pp scattering and the effects of proton polarisation in scattering on nuclei. In 1955 he discovered (together with B. S. Neganov) the resonant character of the reaction p + p → π+ + d. Applying the methods of magnetic spectrometry to the study of the momentum spectra of pions, he was the first to observe the production of pions in collisions of protons with closely correlated groups of nucleons in nuclei. With his colleagues he detected a new nuclear process — the direct knocking out of deuterons from nuclei by protons with an energy of 675 MeV, and also the double-peak structure of the high-momentum part of the spectra of secondary deuterons from dd collisions at 6.3 and 8.9 GeV/c, inelastic coherent processes of pion production in dp and dd collisions without break-up of the incident deuterons, and the dissociation of relativistic deuterons on nuclei with simultaneous production of pions. A number of his papers are devoted to the study of the interaction of nuclei with nuclei at relativistic energies. He is working on problems of automating research in nuclear and elementary particle physics. USSR State Prizes (1951, 1953).