Aleksey V. Mironov

Russian Federation

1945-2023

Obituary:

Dr. (PhD, DSci), IAU member, Alexey V. Mironov died on December 12, 2023.

He was born in Tver (called Kalinin at that time) on January 22, 1945. In 1962, he became a student of the Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Physics (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow University). Having graduated in January, 1968, he continued studies as a post-graduate student. His university tutor was Prof. B.V. Kukarkin. His PhD dissertation “Chemical Composition and Evolution of Stars in Globular Clusters” was successfully defended in 1985. During all his subsequent life in science, he was affiliated to Sternberg Astronomical Institute (SAI) of Moscow University. He spent many years at the mountain observatory of SAI in northern Tien Shan, near Alma-Ata, where a large project of WBVR photometry of bright northern stars was carried out. Alexei Mironov became an experienced expert in theory and practice of astronomical photometry, his book “Fundamental Astrophotometry” (2008) is widely used by astrophysicists in Russia and beyond. He defended his DSci dissertation “Broadband WBVR and `Lyra-B’ photometric systems for high-precision stellar photometry” in 2014.
During the recent years, A. Mironov was a staff member of the SAI Laboratory of New Photometric Methods, in the position of a senior researcher. The team worked on the photometric part of the “Lyra-B” space project. He lectured on astronomical photometry at the Moscow University’s Department of Astronomy. A. Mironov authored about 125 scientific papers.
A very active and pleasant person, A. Mironov was always in the middle of social life. During his student years, he participated as an actor, playing important parts, in Moscow University’s Student Theater, headed by a famous Russian stage director Peter Fomenko. Still a student, in 1967, he became one of the founders of the yearly “Autumn Equinox” event at the SAI, where first-year students are welcomed by their seniors into the astronomical community. He also was an actor at the SAI “Astrotheater”, participating in plays at different social events, among them, New Year performances for kids at the SAI.
His friends will keep their memory of Alexey forever.