Амбарцумян Виктор Амазаспович

Ambartsumian’ s view on astronomy of XX century

Brief information

Ambartsumian Victor Amazaspovich (1908-1996) Astrophysicist , Academician (1943), President of the Academy of Science of Armenia, Academician of Academy of Science of the USSR , Hero of Socialist Labor (twice in 1968,1978), Founder and Director of Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, Founder of the theoretical astrophysics.

The Big Encyclopedic Dictionary, Moscow

Scientific Publishing House “The Big Russian Encyclopedia”, 
St. Petersburg “Norint” 2001 Chief Editor A.M. Prokhorov

“The astronomy of XX century undergoes a grand revolution, comparable with the Copernicus époque. It is a result of the discovery in the Universe of a new type of objects – galaxies active nuclei, producing immense explosions, quasi-stellar radio sources (the quasars) and others. The phenomena occurring in these celestial bodies proved to be totally uncommon and required a radical revision of many conceptions and theories in astrophysics, cosmogony, cosmology. It also calls in question the universality of the psently known fundamental laws of physics. I do not exclude that the study of the Universe will lead to a new revolution in the whole system of physics in the near future.  

We have to accept the revision possibility (and its necessity) of the fundamental theories of physics while proceeding with the study of new fields of the material world. This does not mean at all that the capacities of the existing “old” theories are completely exhausted, they still possess numerous “surprises”. Nevertheless from this point of view, the further development of the physics and the astronomy will have to be bind to formulation of the fundamental theories with larger degree of commonness. In other words, the world’s unanimity principle should be understood in the context of dialectics.

It is a unity linked to the infinite diversity of the material world. The concept of the possibility of the description of the infinite phenomena diversity, studied by astrophysics psently or in the future, by a limited quantity of fundamental laws and theories of the physics is not sufficient. More fruitful is the idea of the nature diversity on the level of the laws as well.”

V.A.Ambartsumian