About Yakov Zeldovich
Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich (Russian: Я́ков Бори́сович Зельдо́вич, Belarusian: Я́каў Бары́савіч Зяльдо́віч; 8 March 1914 – 2 December 1987), also known as YaB, was a leading Soviet physicist of Belarusian origin, who is known for his prolific contributions in physical cosmology, physics of thermonuclear reactions, combustion, and hydrodynamical phenomena. From 1943, Zeldovich, a self-taught physicist, started his career by playing a crucial role in the development of the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons. In 1963, he returned to academia to embark on pioneering contributions on the fundamental understanding of the thermodynamics of black holes and expanding the scope of physical cosmology. == Biography == === Early life and education === Yakov Zeldovich was born into a Belarusian Jewish family in his grandfather's house in Minsk. However, in mid-1914, the Zeldovich family moved to Saint Petersburg. They resided there until August 1941, when the family was evacuated together with the faculty of the Institute of Chemical Physics to Kazan to avoid the Axis Invasion of the Soviet Union. They remained in Kazan until the summer of 1943, when Zeldovich moved to Moscow. His father, Boris Naumovich Zeldovich, was a lawyer; his mother, Anna Petrovna Zeldovich (née Kiveliovich), a translator from French to Russian, was a member of the Writer's Union. Despite being born into a devoted and religious Jewish family, Zeldovich was an "absolute atheist". Zeldovich was an autodidact.
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