Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev

. Nikolai Alexandrovich Kozyrev (Russian Николай Александрович Козырев, English transcription Nikolay Kozyrev ;) (born 20 Augustjul / September 2 1908greg in Saint Petersburg, .. † February 27, 1983 in Leningrad) was a Soviet astronomer.

The main focus of his research formed the Earth's moon, on which Kozyrev for possible signs of volcanic activity concentrated ( Lunar Transient Phenomena ). In the years around 1955, he studied first the luminescence of the lunar surface (method of residual intensity and lunar eclipses ) and could explain the lunar crater Aristarchus the exceptional brightness by the action of solar corpuscular radiation.

After hints of D. Age (1956 ), he observed, inter alia, also regularly the lunar crater Alphonsus using special spectrograms. In November 1958 he discovered on the crater floor of this centrally located mountain ring and the central volcanic mountain luminous phenomena.

This was a scientific sensation and gave the hypothesis that many lunar craters could be formed by volcanism, a new impetus. Subsequent studies showed, however, that the most common cause are meteorites since the Great bombardment 4 billion years ago.

Nikolai Kozyrev, in honor of the International Astronomical Union ( IAU) has the south-southeast of the crater lunar crater located Carver Carver K renamed Kozyrev 1997. Also the asteroid ( 2536 ) Kozyrev was named after him. A device used by esoteric followers called Kozyrev mirrors (also in English spelling Kozyrev familiar ), which is supposed to work according to hypotheses that have been associated with Kozyrev, was also named after him.