Vasilij G. Shevchenko
Vasilij G. Shevchenko (born 1960) is a Ukrainian astronomer, specialist in asteroid photometry, professor at the Department of Astronomy and Space Informatics of Kharkiv University. In 2012, he was awarded M. P. Barabashov Prize, the principal prize of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for Solar System research. Biography. Shevchenko was born on October 15, 1960 in the village Novomutyn in the Sumy Oblast. In 1982, he graduated from the School of Physics Department of A. M. Gorky Kharkiv State University (now V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University). After university, he served 2 years as an  officer in the air defense forces (1982-1984). Since then, he has been working at the Kharkiv Observatory as a junior researcher (1985-1992), a PhD student (1992-1996), a researcher (1996-1998), and a senior researcher (since 1998). In 1997, he defended his PhD thesis "Asteroid photometry: phase dependencies of brightness, photometric model". In 2017, he defended his doctoral dissertation "Integral photometry of asteroids: observation and numerical modeling". Since 2006, he has been teaching at the Department of Astronomy of Kharkiv University as an Associate Professor (2006-2018) and Professor (since 2018). He conducts courses "Planetary Physics", "Practical Astrophysics , Problems of Modern Astrophysics", "Computer Technologies", conducts astrophysical practice at Chuhuiv Observational Station Member of the International Astronomical Union and the European Astronomical Society. Scientific results. Shevchenko's main contributions are studies of the phase dependence of the brightness and the opposition effect of asteroids. Based on the results of photometric observations, he determined the phase functions for different types of asteroids, studied the opposition effect up to extremely small phase angles (less than 1 degree), found some dark asteroids without an opposition effect, and determined the exact albedo for dozens of asteroids. Shevchenko proposed an analytical expression for the  phase function of asteroids. He established a strong correlation between the asteroid's albedo and the slope of the phase dependence, which can be used to determine the albedo. With Shevchenko's participation, satellites of several asteroids and several variable stars were discovered.