Alexander Shlyakhter
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Alexander Isaakovich Shlyakhter (Russian: Александр Исаакович Шляхтер; died June 2000) was a Russian nuclear physicist and risk analyst.
Shlyakhter is best known for discovering empirical evidence for the constancy of fundamental constants. While still a student in Leningrad, he observed that the products of past nuclear reactions at a natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, Gabon demonstrate that the fine-structure constant α has changed less than 10−17 per year over the last two billion years.[1][2][3] He published the finding in a letter to Nature in 1976.[4] Freeman Dyson later wrote that Shlyakhter had "revolutionized the subject" of variation in physical constants.[5]
In 1987 Shlyakhter became a research fellow in Richard Wilson's laboratory at Harvard University.[6] His later work was in risk assessment, and included notable analyses of global warming,[7] nuclear security[8][6] and the Chernobyl disaster.[9][10] He died of cancer in June 2000.[1]