[1] Vitaly Dmitrievich Shafranov was born in the village of Mordvinovo in Ryazan region in 1929.
During World War II, Schafranov attended the school and worked together with his father building roads.
After graduating in 1951, he started to work with nuclear fusion in the Theory Department headed by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Leontovich at LIPAN (Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences) as today's Russian Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute" was known at the time.
In 1981 he became the successor of Leontovich as head of the Theory Department of Nuclear Fusion at the Kurchatov Institute.
Concepts such as the Shafranov shift (1959), the Kruskal-Shafranov stability criterion and limit value and the Grad-Shafranov equation (1957) are named after him.