Vasilii Mikhailovich Babich

Abstract

On 13 June 2020 the prominent mathematician and expert in mechanics, head of the St. Petersburg school in the theory of diffraction and wave propagation Vasilii Mikhailovich Babich observed his 90th birthday. He is the author of many now classical results on the structure of high-frequency asymptotics of solutions of various problems in mathematical physics. The pioneering works in which he developed the ray method for elastic body and surface waves are particularly notable, as are his asymptotic constructions of localized solutions of linear partial differential equations, which have found many applications, and also a series of his papers justifying formulae for high-frequency asymptotics. Babich is an Honoured Scientist of the Russian Federation (2010). His achievements have been marked by the USSR State Prize, which he received together with A. S. Alekseev, V. S. Buldyrev, I. A. and L. A. Molotkov, G. I. Petrashen, and T.B. Yanovskaya for the development of the ray method (1982), the V.A. Fock prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the development of asymptotic methods in diffraction theory (1998), and the prize “A Life Devoted to Mathematics” of the Dynasty Foundation (2014). In previous issues of this journal there are tributes on the occasions of his 70th and 80th birthdays1 to Babich’s research, teaching, and organizational activities in science. A. P. Kiselev and V. P. Smyshlyaev analysed his role in the development of the St. Petersburg school of the theory of diffraction and wave propagation in the paper “The 70th birthday of V. M. Babich” (Zap. Nauchn. Sem. S.-Peterburg. Otdel. Mat. Inst. Steklov. (POMI) 275 (2001), 9–16).2 Babich continues to do fruitful research in mathematical physics; in particular, he works on the theory of complex interference waves [1], [2]. In recent years he