The Georgian Scientific Society and the country in general have lost a true patriot, a well-known scientist and public figure, Academician of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, Laureate of the Georgian State Prize and the Giorgi Nikoladze Prize, Cavalier of the Vernadsky Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Director of Ferdinand Tavadze Metallurgy and Materials Science Institute, Professor Giorgi Tavadze.
Giorgi Tavadze was born in Tbilisi in the family of Ferdinand Tavadze, a famous scientist and public figure academician. His mother, Barbara Karumidze, was the daughter of Alexander (Sasha) Karumidze, a maecenas repressed in 1924.
In 1961, G. Tavadze graduated from the secondary school #23 with honors and in 1961 continued his studies at the Faculty of Metallurgy of the Georgian Polytechnic Institute. Since his early youth Gogi spent more and more time at the Institute of Metallurgy of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, which was headed by Gogi's father, the legendary academician Ferdinand Tavadze. Out of curiosity and eagerness for the novelties, the young man often visited the noisy workshops and laboratories of the institute, where Ferdinand Tavadze's students and followers worked, and was eager to be among them. And then this day came, in 1967 the laboratory assistant Gogi Tavadze started working in the most difficult part of the institute, in the unit known as the special laboratory. The special laboratory worked on a completely closed topic and was strictly confidential. These topics related to the technology of making special steels alloyed with isotope 10B, which had been widely used in the construction of nuclear power reactors to make reactor construction units.
The Institute's Special Laboratory, together with the Leningrad Military-Mechanical Institute, participated in the production of a special toothed gear mounted on board the Soyuz spacecraft. The employees of the special laboratory, including the young Gogi Tavadze, became the author of a closed copyright certificate for this work and received a large cash prize at that time. Thus, Gogi Tavadze, full of young energy and optimism, got into such a scientific turmoil. Here he went through all the stages of his scientific career from laboratory assistant to director, here he achieved intellectual perfection, established himself as a researcher of world importance of rapid processes in metals and one of the leaders of the scientific direction of materials science in Georgia.
In 1976 Giorgi Tavadze defended his PhD and in 1995 - his doctoral dissertations.
But, the main thing was that within the walls of the institute Giorgi Tavadze thoroughly mastered the nuances and requirements of the scientific theme of strategic purpose, he was well versed in the organization and management of defense measures. His dissertation developed the original method of cooling high-speed metals of molten metals. As a result, it became possible to make a variety of goods from boron smelting, including cylindrical and spherical containers. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in Kiev, after submitting a dissertation to the Closed Council of the Institute of Materials Science Problems, the technology was immediately introduced at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology and became the basis for the production of containers for storage of critical mass.
After the famous political and economic events of the nineties, Giorgi Tavadze, as a researcher-expert on strategic problems with great experience and as a courageous patriot, started working in the system of the Georgian Armed Forces. In 1992-2004, with his initiative and personal participation, the Scientific-Technical Division-Service was established in the Ministry of Defense of Georgia, which combined scientific-research, experimental-design works and industry in a unified system. He successfully led and coordinated the work of bringing domestic military products to serial production, as a result of which many types of military products were imported.
In 1997-2005, Giorgi Tavadze was the National Coordinator of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Research and Technology Organization (RTO) and the Land Arms Group (NAAG) in Georgia. In 1996, by the order of the Minister of Defense, Giorgi Tavadze was awarded the rank of Colonel and was awarded the Order of Vakhtang Gorgasali III degree. Giorgi Tavadze became a war and military veteran.
Giorgi Tavadze was engaged in fruitful scientific activity along with his service in the Georgian Armed Forces. In 2004, Giorgi Tavadze joined the reserve and returned to full-time scientific activity at his native institute. In 2006, he was elected director of the institute.
Giorgi Tavadze is a well-known specialist in self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) and the organizer and founder of the scientific school in this field in Georgia.
Under the leadership of Giorgi Tavadze, the institute synthesizes completely new solid alloys, metal and high-temperature ceramic superconducting materials, boric carbide, boron nitride, silicon carbide and others. Manganese-enriched ligatures from manganese industrial wastes (manganese dust, sludge, etc.) were first obtained by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis technology, which is generally a promising direction for the disposal of industrial wastes.
Special mention should be made of the new generation of armored composite ceramic material "Tori" synthesized under the leadership of Giorgi Tavadze. Compared to analogues. It implements a fundamentally new approach to kinetic impactor braking - maximum dissipation of lead kinetic energy in the ultra-dispersed structure of the composite material. With its ballistic and weight characteristics, the composite material "Tori" is equal to or better than foreign analogues. This is confirmed by natural shooting tests in Georgia, as well as in France, Israel and Germany. At the same time, the synthesized ceramic composite with its technology and economic parameters corresponds to the most economical and widely used armor ceramic material - corundum, while its ballistic stability is equal to that of boron carbide.
In 1998, Giorgi Tavadze together with the co-authors was awarded the Georgian State Prize in Science and Technology for his scientific and technical development of the armor composition, for his contribution to the field of defense of the country.
Significant results were also observed in the field of multifunctional metal-ceramic materials. Energy-saving and environmentally friendly self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) technology produces materials with unique properties. The cycle of scientific works performed in this field was awarded the Giorgi Nikoladze Prize in 2013.
Giorgi Tavadze is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, including 2 monographs, 42 copyrights and patents. Most of the works have been published and reported abroad.
The international resonance was caused by Giorgi Tavadze's monograph ("Obtaining of the special materials by methods of self-propagating high-temperature synthesis". Tbilisi, Meridiani Publishing House, 2011), the revised English version of which was published by the public house “Springer” in 2013 and in 2016 it was published in Chinese language in China.
In 2017, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine awarded Giorgi Tavadze with the highest award of the Academy for the pioneering work in the field of materials science: The Gold Medal named after Academician Vernadsky.
Outstanding was Giorgi Tavadze's organizational activity as the director of the institute. He brought the institute out of a state of complete collapse, brought it to the present day and convinced everyone that the reforms carried out by him were successful, the clear manifestation of which is the new complex built for the institute, which was put into operation in 2018. This complex includes a four-storey laboratory building, a double workshop with rolling mills and furnaces, and a building with special boxes for the synthesis of new materials. This is the first time in the history of independent Georgia when a strong scientific center was built.
Giorgi Tavadze's colleagues, friends, disciples and followers expected the same success from him in the future - a lot of innovations had been planned, but this time Gogi "let us down" and without him the expected successful development is in question.
In the person of a true and worthy patriot - Gogi Tavadze, our society lost an outstanding scientist, an outstanding citizen and a devoted public figure, his family lost a loving father and grandfather, and the staff of the Institute lost a wise leader, a faithful friend and colleague, who cared a lot for the institute.
