Rashid Alievich Sunyaev (Рашид Суняев) was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on March 1, 1943 and educated at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Moscow University. He is the head of the High Energy Astrophysics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been chief scientist of the Academy's Space Research Institute since 1992. He is also Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany.
With Yakov B. Zel'dovich, in the Moscow Institute of Applied Mathematics, he proposed what is known as the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, which is due to electrons associated with gas in galaxy clusters scattering the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Sunyaev and N. Shakura developed a model of accretion onto black holes, from a disk, and he has proposed a signature for X-radiation from matter spiraling into a black hole. He has collaborated in important studies of the early universe, including the recombination of hydrogen and the formation of the cosmic microwave background radiation. He led the team which built and operated the Kvant X-ray observatory attached to the Mirspace station and also the GRANAT orbiting X-ray observatory. Kvant made the first detection of X-rays from a supernova in 1987. His team is currently preparing the Spectrum-X-Gamma International International Astrophysical Project, and at Garching he is working on two experiments on the forthcoming ESA Planck mission.
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