Use of powerful shock and detonation waves to study extreme states of matter

This article is written on the basis of a report given 10 January 2003 at the International Scientific Conference, The Nuclear Age: Science and Society, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Igor' Vasil'evich Kurchatov. It presents the results of work on the experimental study of substance properties under high pressure shock waves, briefly describes the use of super-strong magnetic fields for the study of substances at high pressure, presents the results of computational and theoretical research methods, and presents some results of studies of substance properties using liner systems in high-power pulsed electrophysical facilities (VNIIEF disk explosion-magnetic generators and USA Pegasus and ATLAS capacitor banks).