Vadim Ivanovitch Nefedov, a member of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS), has died in Moscow due to cancer at the age of 70. Born in Magnitogorsk in the USSR, Professor Nefedov graduated from the Physicochemical Institute of Leipzig University in 1962. At Leipzig, he was one of the first research students of Armin Meisel at the Laboratory for X-Ray Spectroscopy. In 1965, he completed a post-graduate course at the Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, RAS, where he continued to work and later became head of a laboratory. Nefedov's main scientific work concerns physical chemistry by electron and X-ray spectroscopy, in particular, chemical binding and the structures of many types of materials and compounds. He published more than 400 papers and 10 monographs, which are very useful as comprehensive handbooks in this field. Professor Nefedov formulated an original theory of electron density transfer between ligands and predicted a cis-effect in compounds of nontransition metals, which was confirmed later in experiments. He developed a method for determining the effective charge of atoms in compounds and Madelung energy, which offered a new way of calculating the energy of chemical bonds. He provided a theoretical basis and developed an experimental procedure for quantitative X-ray photoelectron analysis of the surface of solids and depth profiling. Nefedov was awarded the 1985 USSR State Prize, 1989 RSFSR State Prize, the international title of X-ray Professor (1998), and the 2000 and 2005 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Prizes. An obituary by Professors R. Szargan, E. Z. Kurmaev and C. E. Fadley can be found in the Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena, 168, 47 (2008).
