Georgy Timofeyevich Zatsepin (born 28.05.1917) was a Soviet physicist and an academician (1981; corresponding member 1968). He was born in Moscow. He graduated from Moscow University (1941). In 1948 - 70 he worked
at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1963 as head of a laboratory). From 1971 he was head of a department at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and from 1958 also professor at Moscow University.
His research was in the field of cosmic-ray physics, muon physics, neutrino physics and neutrino astrophysics. He developed new methods of studying atmospheric showers. Together with D. V. Skobeltsyn and N. A. Dobrotin he discovered (1949) electron-nuclear showers in cosmic rays and established that the primary particles which generate the showers are not electrons but protons and heavier nuclei, and that the development of the showers rests not on an electromagnetic process, as had been thought, but on a nuclear-cascade one (State Prize, 1951). He was the first to consider (1950) the question of the passage of ultrarelativistic particles through a photon gas. He examined the main characteristics of the muons and neutrinos of cosmic rays. He studied experimentally muons of superhigh energies and their interaction with nuclei. He developed new methods of recording neutrinos from the Sun and proposed experiments to detect neutrinos from collapsing stars.
Lenin Prize (1982).