Sergei Nikolaevich Vernov (11 July 1910 – 26 September 1982) was a Russian-Soviet physicist who pioneered the study of primary cosmic rays.
[1][2][3] Vernov was born in Sestroretsk, where his father Nikolai Stepanovich, worked in the postal department and his mother Antonina was a mathematics teacher.
He was able to find variations with latitude (a reduction by a fourth at the equator) and the influence of the magnetic field in reducing the production of particle breakdown by cosmic rays.
Along with his students A. E. Chudakov, N. V. Pushkov, and S. S. Dolginov they established using measurements aboard satellites that there were multiple ionized radiation belts between 20-60 thousand kilometres from the centre of the Earth with a trap formed by the magnetic field.
The American exploded a nuclear bomb, Starfish Prime, at 400 km above Johnston Island in 1962 and this disrupted the inner radiation belts for years.