Obituary of Igor Leonidovich Solovtsov

Friends and colleagues were very saddened to learn that on 28 July 2007 well-known theoretical physicist Igor Leonidovich Solovtsov died in Gomel, Belarus. He suffered an unexpected heart attack at age 55. He leaves behind him his fellow-physicist wife, Olga Solovtsova, and two sons, Alexander and Dmitry.

Igor was born in Belarus, then part of the Soviet Union, on 9 January 1952. He graduated from secondary school in Gomel in 1970, and then went to Moscow State University, where he studied particle physics and quantum field theory, graduating with honors. He became a trainee-researcher at the Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, in 1976, and received his Candidate of Science degree (first doctoral degree) there in 1979, with a dissertation on “Harmonic Analysis of the Lorentz Group in Composite Models of Elementary Particles.” After teaching for three years at Gomel Polytechnical Institute, he became head of the Mathematics Department there in 1981, a post he held until 1993. In that year he returned to the Bogoliubov Laboratory as a Senior Scientist, until 2001, and defended his Doctor of Science Dissertation there in 2000. He then returned to Belarus (although he retained his affiliation with JINR), as Head of the Department of Higher Mathematics at Gomel State Technical University. He also became head of the International Center for Advanced Studies in Gomel, jointly established by Gomel State University and JINR.

Dr. Solovtsov was a leading expert on quantum chromodynamics (QCD). He devised clever approximation schemes for extracting phenomenologically relevant information from this rather intractable theory. For example, in the mid 1990s he popularized a technique called Variational Perturbation Theory. It was this work that first brought Igor to my attention, and in 1996 we wrote a proposal to the US National Science Foundation, which, together with generous support from the University of Oklahoma, allowed him and Dr. Solotsova to make extended visits to the United States. In these visits we applied a new idea, Analytic Perturbation Theory, developed by Igor and Dimitri Shirkov in 1997, to study many inclusive processes in QCD. This work seems to have had a continuing impact. It was during a theoretical conference in Gomel, after he had given a review talk on ten years of development of this subject, that Igor fell ill and died.

Igor Solovtsov was a wonderful family man, a brilliant scientist, and a true friend. His loss is a tremendous one for theoretical physics, and for all those who wish to make progress in understanding how the Standard Model really describes nature. I am sure that Olga Solovtsova will be able to carry on their joint work.