Leonid Mikhailovich Nemenov (16.02.1905-20.07.1980) was a Soviet experimental physicist and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1962). He was born in Dnepropetrovsk. He graduated from Leningrad University (1929). In 1925-41 he was head of a laboratory at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, in 1943 —62 head of a sector at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and in 1962 — 68 at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. From 1968 he was scientific director of the Accelerator Centre of the All-Union Institute of Physico-Technical and Radio-Technical Measurements.
His work concerned the physics of dielectrics and semiconductors, nuclear physics and accelerator technology. He built the first precision mass spectrograph in the USSR for measuring mass defects (1937). He designed and built a number of cyclotrons, in particular a cyclotron for accelerating multiply charged ions and an isochronous cyclotron with adjustable ion energy. He put forward the idea of an experiment to detect pionium.
USSR State Prize (1953).