Sergei Vasilyevich Starodubtsev (24.10.1914—19.03.1967) was a Soviet physicist, an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR (1956), and its vice-president (from 1956). He was born in Ashkhabad. He graduated from Leningrad University (1935). In 1935-41 he taught at Central Asian (now Tashkent) University, and in 1946—56 he worked at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. One of the organisers of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR (director from 1966), he also headed departments at Tashkent University and the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute.
His research was in the fields of physical electronics, radiation physics of solids, nuclear physics and dosimetry. He developed methods of modulation and double modulation, widely used in the study of secondary electron and ion emission and of adsorption phenomena. Under Starodubtsev's direction one of the first neutron generators in the country was developed and tested. He carried out series of studies on the resonance scattering of gamma rays by nuclei, in particular detecting their scattering by the electric field of the nucleus; on the electromagnetic transitions of beta and conversion electrons; on gamma spectra; and on the angular correlation of cascade gamma radiation.
He compiled tables of numerical values of the probabilities of electromagnetic transitions in nuclei. He obtained polarised neutrons with a high degree of polarisation. He was one of the first to detect spin flip in (d, p) reactions.
He studied the laws of defect formation in dielectrics and semiconductors under the action of various kinds of radiation, radiation effects on the surface of solids, radiation-stimulated diffusion and adsorption, and radiation transformations in benzene and liquid organic scintillators, which underlay the high-dose dosimeters he created, and he developed methods of studying radiation-induced changes in substances.
He created a school in nuclear and radiation physics. The Physico-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR bears his name.