The middle of the XX century is considered as the beginning of the second revolution in astronomy. The epoch of break of usual settled understandings and their exchange by new ones began. Beniamin Egishevich was one of the first among the scientists changed these foundations.
The most exact performance of Beniamin Egishevich is "observer from the God", though he began his activity in astronomy as a theorist at V.Ambartsumian in Leningrad.
It is possible to divide conditionally the scientific activity of Beniamin Egishevich into two phases: stellar and extragalactic.
The first atlas of stellar associations was composed by Beniamin Egishevich in 1948. Together with Ambartsumian, for discovery of stellar associations, he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1948.
It is difficult to imagine, how a man being a theorist, who had devoted the first half of his scientific activity to a research of stellar associations, sharply (at the age of 47) changed his type of activity and discovered forces for a persistent and laborious research of hundreds thousands of spectra of extragalactic objects with a purpose of development of criterions of their searching.
The fast development of the techniques of astronomical observations (proceeding the last 40 years), discovery of new classes of objects, quasars, pulsars, radiogalaxies etc., coincided with the beginning of his works at just mounted Byurakan Schmidt telescope, constructed under his supervision, and beginning of a cycle of works on searching of UV galaxies. If Maarten Schmidt would be delayed on a couple of years with the identification of emission lines in 3C 48 (the spectra of 3C 48 and 3C 273 had been obtained by Greenstein some years before their identification by M.Schmidt), quasars would be doubtlessly open in the course of the Markarian Survey.
Archival plates show that almost 5 years have been spent by Beniamin Egishevich on obtaining and study of a huge amount of observational material with a set of all three objective prisms of the Byurakan Schmidt telescope in a combination with all existing then types of emulsions produced by the Soviet and foreign companies.
It is necessary also to mark the huge organizing work which was parallelly carried out by Beniamin Egishevich on organization and construction of the new largest and the most light-powerful in the world the Byurakan Schmidt telescope.
A lot of years during two decades, stories were told, how carefully the qualified employees of the Leningrad Optical-Mechanical Shop prepared for a defense of that or other technical project on the Byurakan Schmidt telescope to surrender it to Beniamin Egishevich Markarian.
The physical intuition already then allowed Beniamin Egishevich to specify correctly the presence of non-stellar nature of the source situated in the nucleus of a galaxy.
Perhaps Beniamin Egishevich was the first to publish this idea in 1963, where on the basis of the surface distribution of colour obtained by him in galaxies, the presence of a central source of a radiation of non-stellar nature in the nuclei of galaxies was predicted.
Markarian's method became at once very popular and until now is one of the most effective methods for selection of extragalactic peculiar objects.
Beginning with the mid-1960s and continuing through 1980, the first large-scale objective-prism survey for galaxies with blue and UVX in their continuum radiation was conducted by Markarian. The observations of the first Byurakan Survey, also commonly known as the Markarian survey, were carried out with the Byurakan 1 m Schmidt telescope with the use of a low-dispersion (1800 A/mm at Hg) 1.5 degree objective prism. More than 2500 photographic plates which covered nearly 17,000 sq. degree were obtained. FBS was completed in 1980 and published in the series of 15 papers (Markarian 1967, Markarian et al. 1981).
The 1500 Markarian galaxies contained in the FBS have provided the principal base from which the major types of AGNs have been discovered, classified, and studied in detail by numerous astronomers. FBS resulted in a complete sample of AGNs down to a limiting magnitude 15.2. Markarian galaxies comprise 10% of the field galaxies and about 10% of Markarian galaxies turned out to be Sy galaxies, so 1% of the field galaxies were found as Sy galaxies. The FBS remains perhaps the best known source of AGN in the Local Universe.
The tremendous success of the Markarian survey initiated a number of other extragalactic thin-prism surveys, initiated a new direction in extragalactic astronomy - systematic search for peculiar objects using a low-dispersion spectroscopy.
After almost 40 years it can be told with a determinancy that low-dispersion method of searching for extragalactic peculiar objects offered by Markarian was the most effective method of searching of active nuclei of galaxies.
Having convinced that by 2-3 stellar magnitudes larger limit than in the First Survey was really reached in the Second Survey, Beniamin Egishevich told in 1974 - give me 100 new weak Seyfert galaxies and we shall change the customary understanding about them. It is remarkable, that he spoke not of quasars but namely of Seyfert galaxies. Just now after 30 years, we succeeded to execute this task. And really, 150 new weak Seyfert galaxies of Markarian of the Second Survey being the first complete representative sample of weak Seyfert galaxies in the Northern sky, just as the first sample of active galactic nuclei constructed on the basis of the Markarian Survey, strongly require revising of their classification scheme and settled knowledge about the active nuclei of galaxies.
The discovery of 1500 galaxies with UV continuum almost on 15 years transferred the accent of the extragalactic astronomical studies on Markarian galaxies. A huge amount of researches until now have been devoted and are devoted to Markarian galaxies. New possibilities open due to satellite researches in X-ray (ROSAT), infrared (IRAS) ranges, and also the data of radiosurveys (FIRST, NVSS) show, that in the Local Universe, the Markarian galaxies will continue to be the sources of the major information in all ranges of the electromagnetic radiation. Essentially, on the basis of Markarian's First Byurakan Survey, the first sample of active galactic nuclei is constructed, being until now the basis practically for all cosmological or cosmogonical models.Dr. Jivan A. STEPANIAN
Senior researcher, Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory (BAO), Armenia,
Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), Russia,
and UNAM, Mexico