On the history of the Lomonosov Conferences
The 21th Lomonosov Conference will be held at the Moscow State University on August 24-30, 2023.
While the local organizing committee is already working to ensure the personal participation of colleagues in the 21st Lomonosov Conference, however, taking into account possible global medical and political constraints, remote participation in the event will also be possible.
As early as in 1983 the first of the series of conferences (from 1992 called the «Lomonosov Conferences»), was held at the Faculty of Physics of the Moscow State University (June 1983, Moscow). The second conference was held in Chisinau, Republic of Moldavia, USSR (May 1985).
After the four years break this series was resumed on a new conceptual basis for the conference programme focus. During the preparation of the third conference (that was held in Maykop, Russia, 1989) a desire to broaden the programme to include more general issues in particle physics became apparent. During the conference of the year 1992 held in Yaroslavl (Russia) it was proposed by myself and approved by numerous participants that these irregularly held meetings should be transformed into regular events under the title «Lomonosov Conferences on Elementary Particle Physics». That is the reason we consider 1992 as the starting year of Lomonosov Conferences.
Since the conference of the year 1993 (the 6th Lomonosov Conference on Elementary Particle Physics) all of the subsequent conferences of this series has been organized at the Moscow State University on a regular basis each odd year under the title the Lomonosov Conference on Elementary Particle Physics. A wide variety of interesting things, both in theory and experiment of particle physics, astrophysics, gravitation and cosmology, were included into the programmes. It was also decided to enlarge the number of institutions that would take part in preparation of the events.
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765), a brilliant Russian encyclopedist of the era of the Russian Empress Catherine the 2nd, was world renowned for his distinguished contributions in the fields of science and art. He also helped establish the high school educational system in Russia. The Moscow State University was founded in 1755 based on his plan and initiative, and the University now bears the name of Lomonosov.
One of the goals of the Lomonosov conferences is to bring together scientists, both theoreticians and experimentalists, working in different fields. As previous editions of the event, the last Lomonosov conference hold in August 19-25, 2021 has produced a high interest in the world scientific community. In total, there were more than 400 participants from 35 countries (due to coronavirus restrictions all presentations and participation were online). The number of applications for presenting talks at the conference significantly exceeded the capacity to allocate oral talks during the usual six working days of the Lomonosov conferences. There were in total 232 talks including 114 plenary (25–20 min) and 118 sessions (20–10 min) presentations during 7 working days of the conference. Conference programme has included review and original talks on a wide range of items such as neutrino and astroparticle physics, electroweak theory, fundamental symmetries, tests of Standard Model and beyond, heavy quark physics, non-perturbative QCD, quantum gravity effects, physics at the future accelerator.
The 20th Lomonosov conference was organized by the Faculty of Physics of the Moscow State University in cooperation with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna) and the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the patronage of Academician Victor Sadovnichy, the Rector of the Moscow State University. A reasonable support in organizing the event was provided by the Interregional Centre for Advanced Studies and the Bruno Pontecorvo Neutrino and Astrophysics Laboratory (MSU). The 20th Lomonosov Conference was dedicated to the Russian National Year of Science and Technology.
There was a tradition to publish the conferences proceedings as a collection of review and research papers prepared by the conference speakers on the presented talks basis. It started in 1994 when publication of the volume “Particle Physics, Gauge Fields and Astrophysics” containing articles written by the speakers of the 5th and 6th Lomonosov Conferences was supported by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome, 1994).
Proceedings of the 7th and 8th Lomonosov Conference (entitled “Problems of Fundamental Physics” and “Elementary Particle Physics”) were published by the Interregional Centre for Advanced Studies (Moscow, 1997 and 1999).
Proceedings of the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Lomonosov Conferences (entitled “Particle Physics at the Start of the New Millennium”, “Frontiers of Particle Physics”, “Particle Physics in Laboratory, Space and Universe’, “Particle Physics at the Year of 250th An-niversary of Moscow University”, “Particle Physics on the Eve of LHC”, “Particle Physics at the Year of Astronomy”, “Particle Physics in the Year of Tercentenary of Mikhail Lomonosov”, “Particle Physics in the Year of Centenary of Bruno Pontecorvo”, “Particle Physics in the Year of Light”, “Particle Physics at the Silver Jubilee of Lomonosov Conferences”, “Particle Physics in the Year of 150th Anniversary of the Mendeleev`s Periodic Table of Chemical Elements”) were published by World Scientific Publishing Co. (Singapore) in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021, respectively. Information on the conference proceedings can be found at http://lomcon.ru/ .
The proceedings of the 20th Lomonosov conference were published as a series of papers in a special issue of Moscow University Physics Bulletin, 2022, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Allerton Press, Inc., 2022, https://link.springer.com/).
Following the tradition that has started in 1995, each of the Lomonosov Conferences on particle physics has been accompanied by a conference on problems of intellectuals. The 4th International Meeting on Problems of Intellectuals has been held during the last day of the 10th Lomonosov Conference (August, 2001). The subject of the Meeting was specified as follows: “International Co-operation of Intellectuals”. The 5th International Meeting on Problems of Intelligentsia held during the 11th Lomonosov Conference (August, 2003) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “Intelligentsia and Education”, the 6th meeting of this series held during the 12th Lomonosov Conference (August, 2005) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “Intelligentsia and Violence: Responses to Repression and Terrorism”. The 7th International Meeting on Problems of Intelligentsia held during the 13th Lomonosov Conference (August, 2007) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “Rights and Responsibility of the Intelligentsia”. The 8th International Meeting on Problems of Intellectuals held during the 14th Lomonosov Conference on (August, 2009) was dedicated to the issue “The Intelligentsia and World Crisis”. The 9th International Meeting on Problems of Intelligentsia held during the 15th Lomonosov Conference (August 24, 2011) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “The Intelligentsia: Custodial of Civilization”. The 10th International Meeting on Problems of Intelligentsia held during the 16th Lomonosov Conference (August 28, 2013) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “The Intelligentsia and Ideology”. The 11th International Meeting on Problems of Intelligentsia held during the 17th Lomonosov Conference (August 26, 2015) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “The Intelligentsia and Culture”. The 12th International Meeting on Problems of Intelligentsia held during the 18th Lomonosov Conference (August 30, 2017) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “The Future of the Intelligentsia”. The 13th International Meeting on Problems of Intelligentsia held during the 19th Lomonosov Conference (August 28, 2019) was dedicated to discussions on the issue “The Heritage and Future of the Intelligentsia”.
Audio recordings of more than 90 interviews given by prominent participants of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th Lomonosov Conferences can be viewed on the conference website http://lomcon.ru/.
Alexander Studenikin