On February 20, 2026, the OGANESSON Prize ceremony was held at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia.
The award was established by the Armenian scientist Yuri Hovhannisyan, Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Scientific Director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.
The ceremony was attended by Ruben Harutyunyan, Academician-Secretary of the Division of Natural Sciences at the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and Head of the Chair of Genetics and Cytology at the YSU Faculty of Biology.
On behalf of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and the residents of Yuri Hovhannisyan's birthplace, Rostov-on-Don, Ruben Harutyunyan presented Academician Yuri Hovhannisyan with a wood engraving titled "Island of Stability". The artwork commemorates Hovhannisyan's historic discovery of the "Island of Stability" within the periodic table of elements, a finding that has garnered numerous international awards.
The engraving is based on the cover of the first millennium issue of Scientific American, depicting the "Island of Stability" beginning with element 114, discovered by Yuri Hovhannisyan. It was crafted by renowned master Garry Grigoryan, following an initiative by public figure Ararat Gomtsyan, Chief Researcher at the Southern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Ruben Harutyunyan also conveyed a message from the Rector of Yerevan State University, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, announcing the establishment of a scholarship at the YSU Institute of Physics named in honor of Academician Yuri Hovhannisyan, beginning in 2026.
"Yuri Hovhannisyan, born in Rostov, raised in Yerevan, educated in Moscow, and having lived and worked in Dubna for the past sixty years, belongs to all humanity. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna maintains close cooperation with the institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Yerevan State University, and several other scientific institutions," Harutyunyan emphasized.
The award is named after the chemical element oganesson (Og), atomic number 118. In 2016, on the proposal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), this element was named in honor of Yuri Hovhannisyan for his pioneering contributions to the study of transactinide elements.
