Vitaly Dmitriyevich Shafranov (born 1.12.1929) — Soviet physicist, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1981). Born in the village of Mordvinovo, Ryazan Oblast. Graduated from Moscow University (1951). From 1952 he worked at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy.
His work was in plasma physics and controlled thermonuclear fusion. He obtained the condition of microscopic stability of a plasma in a strong magnetic field (the Kruskal — Shafranov criterion), which underlies the Tokamak system. To describe the equilibrium of a toroidal plasma he proposed (1957) a nonlinear scalar equation, which is the basis for calculations of the magnetic system, the evolution and the stability of the plasma in tokamaks. He developed methods of optimising toroidal plasma confinement systems. He put forward the idea of a tokamak of non-circular cross-section with a poloidal divertor, of a steady-state tokamak, of a two-cycle tokamak reactor and others.