Sergei Kopeikin

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Sergei Kopeikin (born April 10, 1956) is a USSR-born theoretical physicist presently living and working in the United States, where he holds the position of Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri-Columbia (UMC). He specializes in the theoretical and experimental study of gravity and general relativity. He is also an expert in the field of the astronomical references frames and time metrology. His general relativistic theory of the Post-Newtonian reference frames which he had worked out along with Victor A. Brumberg, was adopted in 2000 by the resolutions of the International Astronomical Union as a standard for reduction of ground-based astronomical observation. In September 2002 he led a team which conducted a high-precision VLBI experiment to measure the fundamental speed of gravity.

Kopeikin was born in Kashin, a small town near Moscow in what was then the USSR. He graduated with excellence from Department of Astrophysics of Moscow State University in 1983 where he studied general relativity under Leonid Grishchuk presently professor of physics in Cardiff University, England. In 1986, he obtained a Ph.D. in relativistic astrophysics from the Space Research Institute in Moscow. His Ph.D. thesis was advised by Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and presented a first general-relativistic derivation of the conservative and radiation reaction forces in the Post-Newtonian expansions of the gravitational field of a binary system comprised of two extended, massive bodies. In 1991, he obtained a Doctor of Science degree from Moscow State University and moved to Tokyo (Japan) in 1993 to teach astronomy in Hitotsubashi University. He was adjunct staff member in National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in 1993-1996 and a visiting professor in the same observatory in 1996-1997. Kopeikin moved to Germany in 1997 and worked in the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Friedrich Schiller University of Jena until 1999. He had joined Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Missouri-Columbia in February 2000.

He has been married to Zoia Kopeikina (a daughter of Solomon Borisovich Pikelner) since 1980, and they have four daughters. Since February 2000, they have been living in Columbia, Missouri.