Yakiv Volodymyrovych Pavlenko ( â ) was a Ukrainian astronomer and astrophysicist, who researched low-mass stars and exocomets.
He was born in 1954 in village, Zhytomyr region, Ukraine. Pavlenko graduated from Kyiv University in 1976 with a Master's degree in Astronomy and Physics. He was a student of Mykola Avenirovych Yakovkin, a son of Avenir Aleksandrovich Yakovkin.
Pavlenko was an Aspirant at Tartu Observatory (Estonia) in 1979âÂÂ1982, where he received a Candidate of Sciences degree in Astrophysics and Radioastronomy in 1984. He received a Doctor of Science degree in Astrophysics and Radioastronomy at MAO NASU in 1996.
Pavlenko worked at the (MAO NASU) from 1983. From 1994, he was a Senior Research Fellow. From 2017, Pavlenko headed the Department of Physics of Substellar and Planetary Systems of MAO NASU. In 2023, Pavlenko become Chief Research Fellow at the Department of Physics of Substellar and Planetary Systems of MAO NASU.
Beginning in 1989, Pavlenko collaborated with the research group on Exoplanets and Astrobiology of the Instituto de AstrofÃÂsica de Canarias (IAC).
In January 2020, Mario Damasso and colleagues published a paper on the discovery of Proxima Centauri c, the second exoplanet near Proxima Centauri. To exclude fluctuations in spectrum resulted of red dwarf flare activity, Damasso used research work by Pavlenko and others at IAC on analysing spectrography data of HARPS mission.
In 2022, a paper with the results of exocomets research and discovery of 5 new exocomets, written by Pavlenko together with others at MAO NASU, was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. In autumn of that year, he visited IAC to model the atmospheres of brown dwarf and exoplanets objects.
In addition to his research work, Pavlenko was a lecturer and examiner, and was one of editors of the journal '. From 2023, he was an expert adviser to the Science at Risk! project, a Ukrainian digital platform that disseminates information on the effects of war on scientific research in Ukraine.
Pavlenko's wife, Larysa Yakovina, has a PhD in astrophysics; they have a daughter.
Yakiv Pavlenko died on 19 October 2024, at the age of 70. published an obituary on the MAO NASU site.