Aleksandr Gurevich

Aleksandr Viktorovich Gurevich (Russian: Александр Викторович Гуревич) (b. September 19, 1930) is a Soviet and Russian physicist. In 1992 he proposed the theory of lightning initiation known as the "runaway breakdown".
Gurevich graduated from Moscow State University in 1952. In 1984 he became a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Russian Academy of Sciences since 1991). He was the head of the I. E. Tamm Theoretical Department at the Lebedev Physical Institute. From 2010 he is the head of Academic Department of Physics and Astrophysics Problems in Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

His work has focused on:

• Plasma kinetics (1955-)
• Ionospheric physics (1955-)
• Nonlinear dynamics of non-collisional plasmas (1963-)
• Nonlinear waves in dispersive hydrodynamics (1973-)
• Artificial ionized layers in the atmosphere (1977-)
• The electrodynamics of neutron star magnetospheres (1983–1993)
• Nonlinear dynamics of dark matter (1988-)