In memory of Viktor Alekseevich Tsekhomskiy (1937–2017)

Our colleague and friend, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Professor, and Honored Inventor of the USSR, Viktor Alekseevich Tsekhomskiı˘, has passed away.
Viktor Alekseevich was born in Leningrad in 1937. He graduated from Leningrad Technological Institute with a specialization in silicate technology. After graduating from the Institute, V. A. Tsekhomskiı˘ worked for almost 40 years at the State Optical Institute (S. I. Vavilov GOI), where he followed the path from junior scientific fellow to head of the Laboratory of Special Glasses and Glass–Ceramics.
Fifteen candidates of science had Professor Tsekhomskiı˘ as an advisor; he had more than 150 scientific publications and was the author of 25 inventions. Eight types of domestically produced photochromic glasses were introduced at optics factories with Viktor Alekseevich’s active participation and under his management.
Professor Tsekhomskiı˘ was an outstanding Russian scientist, indeed with world-wide recognition. His development of a whole series of new photosensitive and photochromic glasses and his discovery of the size-quantization effect of excitons in copper halide nanocrystals obtained world-wide acknowlegement.
V. A. Tsekhomskiı˘’s achievements are well known at Corning Inc., which is a world leader in the production of glasses for displays and optical fiber. Viktor Alekseevich is the only Russian scientist who reached the highest scientific post in this company—that of research fellow, which corresponds to the post of chief scientific fellow in the organizations of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Viktor Alekseevich is an author of the book Physics and Chemistry of Photochromic Glasses, published in the USA in 1988.
In the last years of his long and fruitful life, Viktor Alekseevich was one of the leading professors at ITMO University and actively carried out much scientific work, imparting knowledge to the young.
Viktor Alekseevich was a cheerful and zestful man. His scientific intellectual curiosity and optimism served as an example for his coworkers and colleagues. In Viktor Alekseevich’s own words, his life’s meaning was not his scientific or administrative career, but constant striving to attain truth and to discover the secrets of the nature that surrounds us. He achieved much in this direction.
We—the numerous coworkers of GOI, ITMO University, and Corning Science Center in St. Petersburg—are proud to be among the students and comrades-in-arms of Professor Tsekhomskiı˘.

Director, Corning Science Center
in St. Petersburg,
member of the Editorial Board
of Opticheskiı˘ Zhurnal,
Senior Member of
The Optical Society (OSA),
A. V. Dotsenko