Vladimir Iosifovich Veksler (4.03.1907—22.09.1966) was a Soviet physicist and an academician (1958; corresponding member 1946). He was born in Zhitomir. He graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (1931). From 1930 he worked at the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute, from 1936 at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences and from 1949 also in the town of Dubna, where from 1956 he was director of the Laboratory of High Energies of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
His scientific work was in the field of the physics and technology of accelerators, high-energy physics, nuclear physics and the physics of cosmic rays. His first studies were connected with cosmic rays and were carried out in the mountains—on Elbrus and in the Pamirs: the nuclear processes caused by the high-energy particles of cosmic radiation were studied. The result of this work was the detection of a new type of shower, later called electron-nuclear. In 1944, independently of E. McMillan, he discovered the principle of phase stability, important for the further development and progress of accelerator technology, and starting from it he proposed a number of new types of accelerator. The discovery of this principle made it possible to develop and build a numerous “family” of various types of charged-particle accelerator — phasotrons, synchrophasotrons and synchrotrons. With the appearance of these machines the modern stage in the development of accelerator technology began, and it led to the creation of high-energy physics.
From 1944 onwards he designed and built new accelerators. He directed the construction of the first Soviet synchrotron (1947). In 1948 — 50, together with a group of physicists, he worked out the physical principles and the theory of the motion of particles which were made the basis of the design of the most powerful proton accelerator of the time—the 10 billion eV synchrophasotron, which came into operation in 1957 in the town of Dubna (Lenin Prize, 1959). On this synchrophasotron Veksler and his colleagues discovered a new elementary particle in 1960 — the anti-sigma-minus hyperon; they studied the processes of the production of strange particles by pi-mesons and the processes of the elastic scattering of protons by protons, and carried out a large volume of research on pion physics.
In 1944 he put forward the idea of the microtron. In 1956 he proposed the principle of the coherent acceleration of particles, considering acceleration by a medium, shock coherent acceleration and the radiative acceleration of plasma bunches. He laid (1956 — 57) the foundations of collective methods of particle acceleration, and was one of the originators of the acceleration of particles by means of a plasma (1957).
USSR State Prize. The Atoms for Peace Award (1963). He founded a school in the field of accelerator technology. Academician-secretary of the Division of Nuclear Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1963-66).