Marat Arakelian
1929 - 1983

Marat Arakelian is one of the well-known Byurakan astronomers, the author of famous Arakelian galaxies, which are target of many-sided studies for many astronomers, as well as Space telescopes.

Marat Arsenovich Arakelian has graduated the Yerevan State University in 1951 with a specialization "astronomer" and was directed to the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, where he worked as laboratory assistant, and later as junior researcher. Soon he became a postgraduate student and in 1956 he successfully passed the Ph.D. thesis "Spectrophotometric investigation of Algol" at the Leningrad State University (LSU, presently, St. Petersburg). In 1957-1959 M.A. Arakelian combines his work with senior teacher position in Department of Astrophysics of the Yerevan State University (YSU). Since 1960 to 1966 he was a junior researcher and a lecturer at the LSU. Later on, since 1966 M.A.Arakelian again works at BAO and combines his research with a position of a lecturer at the Department of Astrophysics of YSU. In 1967, he became a senior researcher at BAO and headed an important direction in the extragalactic astronomy.

In 1976, M.A. Arakelian defended his second Doctoral Degree thesis" Spectral observations and statistics of galaxies with active nuclei" at the Moscow State University.

M.A.Arakelian is known as a prominent specialist in extragalactic astronomy. His papers are well known. He has proved the extragalactic origin of quasars, he has suggested a new method of definition of space density of extragalactic objects. In collaboration with specialists of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute (SAI, Moscow University) he measured radial velocities of 800 faint galaxies and quasars.

Together with E.A. Dibai and V.F. Esipov, Arakelian spectroscopically observed and studied a few hundred Markarian galaxies and discovered more than 40 new Seyfert galaxies among them. Later on, they observed and studied new galaxies with high surface brightness, revelead by Arakelian himself.

The "Catalogue of high surface brightness galaxies" created by Arakelian is well known among all astronomers. The objects of his Catalogue (so called Arakelian galaxies) have been observed in many Observatories in USA, UK, USSR, and elsewhere in optical wavelengths, radio and X-rays.

Arakelian carried out a number of other investigations as well, such as the classification of the central regions of 711 galaxies, study of the dependence of emission-line intensities in Seyfert galaxies on color index, studies of Seyfert galaxies in clusters (with V.Yu. Terebizh), statistical work on morphological types of isolated galaxies and components of pairs, etc.

Arakelian published about 100 papers in various astrophysical journals, including Astrofizika, Astronomical Journal, Astrophysical Journal, Astronomy Letters, Astronomical Tsirkulyar, etc.