Harold E. Edgerton Award

SPIE Fellow Mikhail Y. Schelev, the late head of the Picosecond Photonics Lab at Prokhorov General Physics Institute (Russia) and a leading developer of streak cameras and other high-speed image-recording instrumentation, has been named recipient of the 2017 SPIE Harold E. Edgerton Award.

Schelev died in September 2016, just weeks after the SPIE Awards Committee voted to present him with the annual award.

A professor of physical electronics and the world’s foremost expert in high-speed photoelectric image recording science, Schelev led a unique research group specializing in electro-optical image tube design and picosecond and femtosecond image recording in the visible, infrared, UV, and x-ray regions.

His innovative methods and tools are important for studying high-speed processes in laser physics, nonlinear and fiber optics, photoemissive electronics, and laser plasma physics.

In addition to the Edgerton Award, Schelev’s achievements earned him the Lenin Komsomol Prize in 1971, the German Physical Society’s International Hubert Schardin Gold Medal in 1972, the USSR State Prize in 1986, and the 2009 “VIDE & CREDE” award established by the Japan Society for High-Speed Photography and Photonics and the Hamamatsu company. In 2014, he also received the Stoletov Prize, an award honoring the founder of electrical engineering.

Over the course of his long career, Schelev served as a visiting scientist at the National Research Council of Canada, V-TEK (Republic of Korea), Beijing Institute of Technology (China) where he held the title of honored professor, and at other scientific organizations.

Schelev received his doctor of sciences degree in physics and mathematics from Lebedev Physical Institute and was the author of more than 400 research articles and reports, including more than 75 with SPIE.

He served on the program committee for the ultrafast x-ray detectors and applications conference at the SPIE annual meeting for many years, and he chaired an SPIE conference on high-speed photography and photonics several times.

His conference presentations, particularly those on his unique, ultrafast streak tubes, received great attention among participants, said Manfred Hugenschmidt of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), who knew Schelev for more than 40 years. Manufacturers of high-speed equipment and high-speed cameras “frequently wanted to make use of Schelev’s techniques or systems for improving their own products,” Hugenschmidt said.

The Harold E. Edgerton Award is presented annually for outstanding contributions to optical or photonic techniques in the application and understanding of high speed physical phenomena.

Read more about SPIE Awards.

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