Nikolai Semyonovich Kardashev (Russian: Никола́й Семёнович Кардашёв, romanized: Nikolay Semyonovich Kardashyov, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj sʲɪˈmʲɵnəvʲɪtɕ kərdɐˈʂof]; April 25, 1932 – August 3, 2019)[1] was a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist best known for the Kardashev scale,[2] which measures a civilization's status in technological evolution based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing and using.

He was also the deputy director of the Astro Space Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

His parents were Semyon Karlovich Brike and Nina Nikolaevna Kardasheva; his father was an important member of the party, and his mother joined as well before the October Revolution in 1917.

[6] In 1964, at a conference in Soviet Armenia, he presented a paper titled "Передача информации внеземными цивилизациями" ("Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations").

[6] He also proposed Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), which replaced conventional radio transmission lines with magnetic tape recordings; it was demonstrated in 1967.

[6] In 2012, Nikolai received the Grote Reber Gold Medal for innovative lifetime contributions to radio astronomy.