Dmitri Vladimirovich Skobeltsyn (Russian: Дмитрий Владимирович Скобельцын) (born November 12, 1892, Saint Petersburg – November 16, 1990) was a Soviet physisist, academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1946), Hero of Socialist Labor (1969).
Dmitri Skobeltsyn was awarded the Stalin Prize (1950), six Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and numerous medals.
In 1923, while using a cloud chamber[1] to try to detect gamma radiation in cosmic rays, Skobeltsyn detected particles that acted like electrons but curved in the opposite direction in an applied magnetic field. He was puzzled by these results, and they remained unexplained until the discovery of the positron in 1931.[2]