In 1952, Zeldovich began work in the field of elementary particles and their transformations.
He predicted the beta decay of a pi meson.
Together with S. Gershtein he noticed the analogy between the weak and electromagnetic interactions, and in 1960, he predicted the muon catalysis (more precisely, the muon-catalysed dt-fusion) phenomenon.
In 1977, Zeldovich together with Fyodor Shapiro was awarded the Kurchatov Medal, the highest award in nuclear physics of the USSR.
The citation was "for prediction of characteristics of ultracold neutrons, their detection and investigation".
He was elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences on 20 June 1958.
He was a head of division at the Institute of the Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1965 until January 1983.

In early 1960s, Zeldovich started working in astrophysics and physical cosmology.
In 1964, he and independently Edwin Salpeter were the first to suggest that accretion discs around massive black holes are responsible for the huge amounts of energy radiated by quasars.
From 1965, he was a professor at the Department of Physics of the Moscow State University and a head of the division of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute.
 In 1966, he and Igor Novikov was the first to propose searching for black hole candidates among binary systems in which one star is optically bright and X-ray dark and the other optically dark but X-ray bright (the black hole candidate).

Zeldovich worked on the theory of the evolution of the hot universe, the properties of the microwave background radiation, the large-scale structure of the universe, and the theory of black holes.
He predicted, with Rashid Sunyaev, that the cosmic microwave background should undergo inverse Compton scattering.
This is called the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, and measurements by telescopes such as the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope has established it as one of the key observational probes of cluster cosmology.
Zeldovich contributed sharp insights into the nature of the large scale structure of the universe, in particular, through the use of Lagrangian perturbation theory (the Zeldovich approximation) and the application of the Burgers' equation approach via the adhesion approximation.
In 1952, Zeldovich began work in the field of elementary particles and their transformations. He predicted the beta decay of a pi meson. Together with S. Gershtein he noticed the analogy between the weak and electromagnetic interactions, and in 1960, he predicted the muon catalysis (more precisely, the muon-catalysed dt-fusion) phenomenon. In 1977, Zeldovich together with Fyodor Shapiro was awarded the Kurchatov Medal, the highest award in nuclear physics of the USSR. The citation was "for prediction of characteristics of ultracold neutrons, their detection and investigation". He was elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences on 20 June 1958. He was a head of division at the Institute of the Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1965 until January 1983.
In early 1960s, Zeldovich started working in astrophysics and physical cosmology. In 1964, he and independently Edwin Salpeter were the first to suggest that accretion discs around massive black holes are responsible for the huge amounts of energy radiated by quasars. From 1965, he was a professor at the Department of Physics of the Moscow State University and a head of the division of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute.  In 1966, he and Igor Novikov was the first to propose searching for black hole candidates among binary systems in which one star is optically bright and X-ray dark and the other optically dark but X-ray bright (the black hole candidate).
Zeldovich worked on the theory of the evolution of the hot universe, the properties of the microwave background radiation, the large-scale structure of the universe, and the theory of black holes. He predicted, with Rashid Sunyaev, that the cosmic microwave background should undergo inverse Compton scattering. This is called the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, and measurements by telescopes such as the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope has established it as one of the key observational probes of cluster cosmology. Zeldovich contributed sharp insights into the nature of the large scale structure of the universe, in particular, through the use of Lagrangian perturbation theory (the Zeldovich approximation) and the application of the Burgers' equation approach via the adhesion approximation.
Yakov Zeldovich