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Samuil Kaplan (1921-1978) was a productive and famous astrophysicist. He was affiliated with a number of scientific centers in different cities of former Soviet Union. The earliest 13 years of his career, namely in the 1948-1961 years, he worked in Lviv University in Ukraine (then it was called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). In the present paper, the Lviv period of his life and scientific activity is described on the basis of archival materials and his published studies. Kaplan arrived in Lviv in June 1948, at the same month when he obtained the degree of Candidate of science. He was a head of the astrophysics sector at the Astronomical Observatory of the University, was a professor of department for theoretical physics as well as the founder and head of a station for optical observations of artificial satellites of Earth. He was active in the organization of the astronomical observational site outside of the city. During the years in Lviv, Kaplan wrote more than 80 articles and 3 monographs in 9 areas. The focus of his interests at that time was on stability of circular orbits in the Schwarzschild field, on white dwarf theory, on space gas dynamics, and cosmic plasma physics, and turbulence, on acceleration of cosmic rays, on physics of interstellar medium, on physics and evolution of stars, on cosmology and gravitation, and on optical observations of Earth artificial satellites. Some of his results are fundamental for development of theory in these fields as well as of observational techniques. The complete bibliography of his works published during the Lviv period is presented. Respective scientific achievements of Samuil Kaplan are reviewed in the light of the current state of research in these areas., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Europian Physical Journal H

We study the geometry and dynamics of the Vela complex including the Vela supernova remnant (SNR), the binary system gamma2 Velorum and the Gum nebula. We show that the Vela SNR belongs to a subclass of non-Sedov adiabatic remnants in a cloudy interstellar medium (ISM), the dynamics of which is determined by the heating and evaporation of ISM clouds. We explain observable characteristics of the Vela SNR with a SN explosion with energy 1.4 x 10^50 ergs near the step-like boundary of the ISM with low intercloud densities (~ 10^{-3} cm^{-3}) and with a volume-averaged density of clouds evaporated by shock in the north-east (NE) part about four times higher than the one in the south-west (SW) part. The observed asymmetry between the NE and SW parts of the Vela SNR could be explained by the presence of a stellar wind bubble (SWB) blown by the nearest-to-the Earth Wolf-Rayet (WR) star in the gamma2 Velorum system. We show that the size and kinematics of gamma2 Velorum SWB agree with predictions of numerical calculations for the evolution of the SWB of M_ini = 35M* star. The low initial mass of the WR star in gamma2 Velorum implies that the luminosity of the nuclear line of 26Al, produced by gamma2 Velorum, is below the sensitivity of existing gamma-ray telescopes., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in A&A