(b. July 3, 1925, Leningrad, now St. Petersburg -- d. January 5, 1996, Kharkov). One of discoverers of supersymmetry [1] and supergravity [2]. In 1959 he introduced parastatistics [3], a generalization of Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics (now is known as the Green-Volkov statistics). He also discovered Regge poles conspiracy for scattering amplitudes of particles with spin (1962) (PDF), introduced to elementary particle physics the notion of collinear subgroups for classification of resonances (1965) (PDF), constructed the theory of Goldstone particles for spontaneously broken groups of internal and space-time symmetries (1969), considered in statistical physics magnons as Goldstonions and proposed a general Lagrangian for spin waves (1971) (PDF).
In 1971 at the Int. Seminar "Functional Methods in Quantum Field Theory and Statistics" held in Lebedev Physical Institute he presented the general idea of consistent unification of internal symmetry groups with the Poincare group and explained how to include in it the Goldstone particles corresponding to fermionic fields [4]. In 1972 he specifically realized this unification in building the first four-dimensional field model with spontaneously broken symmetry [1] (now called supersymmetry, Volkov-Akulov theory and the Volkov-Akulov Lagrangian).
In the last paragraph of the seminal paper [1] he stated the idea of gauging (of supersymmetry) and proposed to consider an analog of Higgs effect (now super Higgs effect) when the massive gauge field with spin 3/2 (the Rarita-Schwinger field, now called gravitino) `eats' the Goldstone fermion (see also his SUSY Story). This was the supergravity idea first made public and thoroughly elaborated in [2], where actually supergravity in superspace was constructed (though in a special model). The superfields in such class of models are called Volkov-Akulov superfields.
Then he rediscovered the odd Poisson bracket (so-called Buttin bracket) (PDF) and applied it for hydrodynamic systems, found a new type of the spontaneous compactification of extra dimensions in supergravity theories (PDF) and invented the superembedding mechanism in the twistor-like approach for superparticles, superstrings and superbranes, so-called doubly supersymmetry approach (hep-th/9501113), in which the target space and worldvolume supersymmetries are simultaneously manifest, proposed the generalized action principle for superstrings and superbranes (hep-th/9502141). The bibliography and reprints of the basic papers are in [5].
Ph.D. in Physics (1958) from the Kharkov State University, from 1952 till 1996 in Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, 1987-1996 a member of the Editorial Board of the journal "Yadernaya Fizika" (Sov. J. Nucl. Phys.), 1988 the Full Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 1993 the expert of the Soros Committee (Washington), 1997 the Thirring Medal in theoretical physics.
More biographical data can be found in [6].
[2] D. V. Volkov, V. A. Soroka, JETP Lett. 18 (1973) 312 (PDF); Theor. Math. Phys. 20 (1974) 829.
[3] D. V. Volkov, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. (U.S.S.R.) 36 (1959) 1560 (PDF).
[4] D. V. Volkov, Phenomenological Lagrangians invariant under symmetry groups containing Poincare group as subgroup, Preprint FIAN 141/1971, Moscow (1971) (PDF).
[5] J. Wess, V. Akulov, Eds. Supersymmetry and Quantum Field Theory, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1998, p. 399.
[6] S. I. Volkova, A. A. Zheltukhin, Glimpses of Dmitry Volkov's Life and Work, Nucl. Phys. Proc. Suppl. B101 (2001) 20.