Two Russian-Armenian scientists have this year had the honor to be named authors of groundbreaking inventions.

Academician Yuri Vardanyan, who invented the 118th element on the periodic table (oganeson), and Sergey Vardanyan, a geographer who wrote a scholarly work on the last mammoths on earth, are on the RIA Novosti news agency’s ranking of  “scientists who shocked the world”.

Hovhannisyan, a graduate of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (1956), was for many years a deputy director at the Dubna Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, 1976-1989).  From 1989 until 1997, he headed the institution, later becoming also a scientific supervisor. Hovhannisyan has worked at the University of Paris (1969-1970); he is professor of the Yerevan State University, Frankfurt University and the University of Messina.

Vardanyan, who was the first to discover remnants of dwarf mammoths on the Wrangel Island, published recently an article on the last mammoths (Vardanyan and co.) in the Nature magazine. His scholarly endeavor gained a worldwide attention.