Gennady Andreyevich Mesyats (born 28.02.1936) is a Soviet physicist and a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1979). He was born in Kemerovo. He graduated from the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute (1958). From 1961-69 he was head of a laboratory at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, and in 1969 —77 deputy director of the Institute of Atmospheric Optics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1977 he has been director of the Institute of High-Current Electronics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and from 1970 also a professor at the Tomsk Institute of Automated Control Systems and Radioelectronics, and from 1978 at Tomsk University.
His scientific research is in the fields of electronics, the physics of gas-discharge plasma, the physics of fast processes and pulse technology. He discovered the phenomenon of explosive electron emission and carried out a fundamental study of it. In 1967 he created a high-current nanosecond electron accelerator. He developed methods of generating, correcting and transforming powerful nanosecond pulses. He studied fast processes in vacuum and gas discharges and proved the fundamental role of explosive processes in these discharges and the volume character of nanosecond discharges in high-pressure gases. He showed the possibility of volume discharges in gases under electron injection, which made it possible to create new types of powerful ion lasers, including gas lasers
USSR State Prize (1978).