Igor Goncharenko (1965-2007)
Igor Goncharenko recently passed away in a diving accident in the Red Sea. Igor Goncharenko was 42 years old. Igor was an outstanding
experimental physicist, certainly recognized as a world leader for neutron scattering studies at high pressure. He has demonstrated the use
of neutrons to study small samples in diamond and sapphire anvil cells up to pressure in the half-megabar range. He was currently trying to
measure neutron diffraction on an hydrogen sample in the 100 GPa range. He has achieved some seminal contributions on the high pressure
properties of hydrides, simple molecular systems and spin systems. Igor was an active member of the high-pressure crystallography community
and a committee member of the the European High Pressure Research Group.
Igor Goncharenko started his career in high pressure at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. Since 1996, he has been a research scientist at
the neutron facility Laboratoire Léon Brillouin in France. His colleagues and close collaborators are shocked and very saddened by this loss.
He was a generous colleague, very helpful and full of enthusiasm for challenging projects. Igor will be remembered as a reference and deeply
regretted. The high pressure community would like to express here their condolences to his wife, Lada, his family and his friends.
Paul Loubeyre, CEA, France.