Yakov Borisovich Zel ' dovich Yakov Borisovich Zel ' dovich ForMemRS ( , ) ( 8 March 1914 – 2 December 1987 ) was a prolific Soviet physicist born in Belarus . He played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons , and made important contributions to the fields of adsorption and catalysis , shock waves , nuclear physics , particle physics , astrophysics , physical cosmology , and general relativity . Early life and education . He was born to a Jewish family in Minsk ( now Belarus ) . Four months later his family moved to Saint Petersburg . They remained in that city ( known as Leningrad from 1924 – 1991 ) until August 1941 , when together with the institute where Zel ' dovich worked , they were evacuated to Kazan to avoid the Axis Invasion of the Soviet Union . They remained in Kazan until the summer of 1943 , when Zel ' dovich moved to Moscow . Despite being raised in a Jewish family , he later on became an atheist . In May 1931 , at age seventeen , Zel ' dovich became a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences . He was associated with the Institute until the end of his life . In 1936 he defended his dissertation , which was on the adsorption and catalysis on heterogeneous surfaces , for his " Candidate of Science " ( equal to PhD ) . The most important point of it was the research on the " Freundlich ( or classical ) adsorption isotherm " . Zel ' dovich discovered the theoretical foundation of this empirical observation . In 1939 he received the degree of " Doctor of Science " ( Physics and Mathematics ) , the doctor dissertation being on the oxidation of nitrogen . Zel ' dovich discovered its mechanism , known in physical chemistry as " Thermal NO Mechanism " or " Zel ' dovich Mechanism " . Soviet nuclear Project . Between 1937 and 1948 he worked on the theory of ignition , combustion and detonation . From 1939 – 1940 together with Julii Khariton Zel ' dovich achieved important results in the " Theory of Nuclear Chain Reactions " . In 1943 he began his participation in the Soviet Atomic Project , working along with Igor Kurchatov . His work on nuclear weapons continued until October 1963 . Contribution in Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics . In 1952 he began work in the field of elementary particles and their transformations . He predicted the beta decay of a pi meson . Together with S . Gershtein he noticed the analogy between the weak and electromagnetic interaction s , and in 1960 predicted the muon catalysis ( more precisely , the muon - catalysed dt - fusion ) phenomenon . In 1977 Zel ' dovich together with Fyodor Shapiro was awarded the Kurchatov Medal , the highest award in nuclear physics of the USSR . The citation was " for prediction of characteristics of ultracold neutrons , their detection and investigation " . He was elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences on 20 June 1958 . He was a head of division at the Institute of the Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1965 until January 1983 . Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology . In early 1960s he started working in astrophysics and physical cosmology . In 1964 , he and independently Edwin Salpeter were the first to suggest that accretion disc s around massive black hole s are responsible for the huge amounts of energy radiated by quasars . Since 1965 he was also a professor at the Department of Physics of the Moscow State University , and a head of the division of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute . Zel ' dovich worked on the theory of the evolution of the hot universe , the properties of the microwave background radiation , the large - scale structure of the universe , and the theory of black hole s . He predicted , with Rashid Sunyaev , that the cosmic microwave background should undergo inverse Compton scattering . This is called the Sunyaev - Zel ' dovich effect , and measurements by telescopes such as the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope has established it as one of the key observational probes of cluster cosmology . Zel ' dovich contributed sharp insights into the nature of the large scale structure of the universe , in particular , through the use of Lagrangian perturbation theory ( the Zel ' dovich approximation ) and the application of the Burger ' s equation approach via the adhesion approximation . Black hole thermodynamics . Zel ' dovich played a key role in developing the theory of black hole evaporation due to Hawking radiation , where in his visit to Moscow in 1973 , Soviet scientists Zel ' dovich and Alexander Starobinsky showed Hawking that , according to the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle , rotating black hole s should create and emit particles . Honors and recognition . Igor Kurchatov called him a " genius " and Andrei Sakharov named him " a man of universal scientific interests . " Stephen W . Hawking once said to Zel ' dovich : " before I met you , I believed you to be a ' collective author ' , like Bourbaki . "