Yuri Gaponov, professor and doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, graduated from Moscow State University (MSU) in 1958, where he did post-graduate studies. In 1963 he was employed at the RRC Kurchatov Institute where he is presently leader of the laboratory of theoretical physics. He has published about 100 scientific articles in nuclear theory, weak interaction and neutrino physics. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences' scientific committees on neutrino physics, nuclear physics and applied nuclear physics. From 1963 to the present he was the main producer of the physicist amateur theatre club Archimedes. Gaponov created the Physical Day tradition at the MSU (1960–69), where he organised the 1961 celebration with the participation of Niels Bohr. The tradition was subsequently transferred to the Kurchatov Institute (1972-84), where Gaponov served as the permanent main producer. In the 1990s he organised, in cooperation with historians, public seminars in Moscow on the history of the Soviet atomic bomb/energy project, whereupon he became initiator of a series of international symposia on the same topic (HISAP), the first two of which were held in Dubna, Russia (1996) and Laxenburg, Austria (1999), respectively.