Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov was born in 1904 in the village of Novaya Chiglain in what was then the Voronezh Governorate of South Russia (now the Voronezh Oblast of Central District, Russia) to peasant farmers Alexey Cherenkov and Mariya Cherenkova. His mother died two years aftern his birth, with his father quickly remarrying, and Pavel and his sister being raised by their stepmother from this time.
Cherenkov's education was interrupted by the Russian Revolution, and he did not complete his secondary education until 1924. He subsequently enrolled at the Voronezh State University to study physics and mathematics, supporting himself while he studied through tutoring and unloading rail cars, and returning home to work on the farm in the summer.
He graduated in 1928, going on to teach at a High School for two years, before moving to Leningrad (St Petersburg), where he married Maria Putintseva, daughter of Alexei Mikhailovich Putintsev, Professor of Russian Literature, and enrolled at the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as a graduate student.
Cherenkov's original project was to study 'The luminescence of uranyl salt solutions under the action of gamma-rays', under the supervision of Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. This was achieved by shining a beam of gamma rays through solutions of uranyl salts. Upon doing this, Cherenkov discovered a faint blue glow was produced, which eventually became the main focus of his studies.
However, the glow was initially interpreted by Vavilov as being a result of the luminescence of impurities in Cherenkov's solutions, leading him to suspect that Cherenkov was lazy in his preparation technique. Furthermore, Cherenkov's experimentation technique, which involved sitting in a darkened room with a black cloth over his face before running experiments in order to ensure that he would be able to perceive the faint glows produced, led some of his fellow students to accuse him of spiritualism - a dangerous allegation in Stalin's Russia.
Both Cherenkov's father Alexey Cherenkov, and his father-in-law, Alexei Putintsev, were arrested for political crimes in the 1930s, with Alexey Cherenkov first disappearing, and eventually being executed, while Alexei Putintsev was sentenced to hard labour at a logging camp. This meant that Maria Chernekov, as the daughter of a dissident, could not find work, leaving the family (by this time they had a son, Alexey junior, and would later have a daughter, Yelena) reliant upon Pavel Cherenkov's income as a researcher.
In 1934 the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was relocated to Moscow, becoming the Lebedev Physical Institute. Here Cherenkov was able to produce a clearly visible blue light from a bottle of water he could be confident lacked any impurities, leading others to begin to take his findings more seriously.
Cherenkov was able to demonstrate that focussing gamma rays on a bottle of water produced a cone of blue light, which points in approximately the same direction, but typically is not centred on the original beam. Two colleagues of Cherenkov's, Igor Tamm and Ilya Frank were able to calculate that the light was the result of electrons travelling at speeds faster than the speed of light in water being fired into the water, creating a shockwave within the local electromagnetic field.
Cherenkov, Tamm, and Frank, convinced that their discovery was of great significance, submitted their findings to the journal Nature in 1937, although their paper was rejected. They then submitted the same paper to the Physical ReviewPhysical Review later that year, where it was published.
This 'Cherenkov Effect' became the best available method for distinguishing between subatomic particles produced in particle accelerators, where the angle by which a particle is deflected and the light it emits can be used to calculate its mass and velocity. The method is also used to study cosmic rays.
In 1940 Pavel Cherenkov was awarded the title of Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences, and promoted to Section Leader at the Lebedev Physical Institute. In 1946 Cherenkov, Ivanovich, Frank, and Tamm, were awarded the State Stalin Prize for their work.
Also in 1946, Pavel Cherenkov began working on electron accelerators with Vladimir Iosifovich Veksler, work for which he received a second Stalin Prize in 1952, and was awarded a professorship in 1953, going on the lead the Photo-meson Processes Laboratory at the Lebedev Physical Institute and construct the Soviet Union's first synchrotron facility.
In 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Igor Tamm, and Ilya Frank were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, 'For the discovery and recognition of Cherenkov Radiation'. In 1970 Cherenkov was made an Acadamician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1977 he was awarded the USSR State Prize, and in 1984 declared to be a 'Hero of Socialist Labour'.
Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov died on 6 January 1990, and is buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
