Sergei Glebovich Rautian (born 18.12.1928) is a Soviet physicist and a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1979). He was born in Leningrad. He graduated from Moscow University (1952). In 1953 — 65 he worked at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1965-69 he was head of a laboratory at the Institute of Semiconductors of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1969 — 71 he worked at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1971 — 77 he was head of a sector at the Institute of Spectroscopy of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1977 he has been deputy director of the Institute of Automation and Electrometry of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and professor and head of a department at Novosibirsk University.
His work is in optics, quantum electronics and nonlinear spectroscopy. He carried out a broad cycle of studies on laser physics and laser optics and on the physics of collisions. He developed new principles for creating a population inversion, predicted narrow nonlinear resonances on Doppler-broadened spectral lines and studied them. He investigated the role of collisions in linear and nonlinear spectroscopy.