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D.V. Volkov in CERN
2025 marked the 100th anniversary of Dmitry Vasilyevich Volkov, one of Ukraine's outstanding theoretical physicists who laid the foundations of modern high-energy/particle physics. Volkov was one of the few Soviet/Ukrainian scientists who gained international recognition early in his scientific career. Therefore, it is no coincidence that he was invited to join delegations of Soviet scientists to CERN (1958, 1961, 1962), to undertake an internship and work in the theoretical department at the personal invitation of the CERN directorate (1965, 1976-77). His last visit to CERN was in 1994 for a series of lectures on supergravity theory (dedicated to the 125th anniversary of Élie Cartan).
The dating and authorship of the discovery of supergravity theory, for which S. Ferrara, D. Friedman, and P. van Nieuwenhuizen were awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2019, is still a subject of debates among scientists. The pioneering works of D.V. Volkov and V.A. Soroka on supergravity in 1973-74 were a direct generalization of Goldstone's fermion idea, which had previously led to the discovery of supersymmetry. Nevertheless, the history of supergravity in the Western world is usually traced back to the works of D. Friedman, S. Ferrara, P. van Nieuwenhuizen, S. Deser and B. Zuminо of 1976. A retrospective of Volkov's life and work at CERN, and CERN’s role as a public platform in defending the priority of Volkov's discoveries will be outlined.