What’s in a Name?
Pavel Cherenkov was a Soviet scientist and a recipient of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics who earned the Prize for his discovery of an phenomenon called “Cherenkov Radiation”.
Cherenkov Radiation is the emission of blue light from the de-excitation of electrons (i.e. electromagnetic radiation) traveling through a dielectric material at a speed greater than the speed of light in that material. It is similar to a sonic boom, where the speed of the object traveling through air exceeds the speed of sound, but much, much faster.
Air is a dielectric material and Borzoi are incredibly swift runners, similar to the electrons of matter exhibiting Cherenkov Radiation.
I studied the Cherenkov Radiation phenomenon as part of my engineering degree program (which I graduated from in 2018). Coincidentally this shade of blue (as captured in pictures) is one of my favorites and one that looks really good against the red of Silver, my first Borzoi boy.
It seemed like a perfect moniker to identify with——Russian, swift, nerdy.