Alexander Ilyich Achijeser
Aleksander Akhiezer ( Russian Александр Ильич Ахиезер , in German sometimes also transcribed Ahiezer English transliteration Aleksandr Il'ich Akhiezer, * 31 October 1911 in Cherykaw , today Belarus ; † 4. May 2000 in Kharkiv ) was a Soviet - Ukrainian theoretical physicist who worked in quantum electrodynamics (QED), nuclear physics , plasma physics and solid state physics , among others .
life and work
Achijeser was the son of a doctor and studied at the Polytechnic in Kiev from 1929 to 1934 , where he graduated in radio technology. Since he was more interested in theoretical physics, he went to Lev Landau at the Physics-Technical Institute in Kharkiv on the advice of his brother . There he was accepted by Landau after an oral examination and worked with Isaak Pomerantschuk , another Landau student, on nonlinear problems of quantum electrodynamics , especially the scattering of photons on each other at high energies, a problem that Werner Heisenberg was also investigating with his student Hans Euler at the same time . In 1936 he received his doctorate from Landau (candidate title, other examiners were Igor Tamm and George Placzek ). After Landau went to Moscow in 1938, Achijeser succeeded him as head of the theoretical physics department in Kharkiv. In 1940 he received the Russian doctorate (corresponds to a habilitation in the West) with a thesis on the absorption and penetration depth of sound waves by electrons in dielectrics and metals (continued in 1957 in studies on ultrasonic absorption ). In 1941 he received a full professorship. He stayed at the Physical-Technical Institute (NSC KIPT) in Kharkiv until the end of his life. In 1996, on his initiative, the Department of Theoretical Physics, which he headed until 1988, founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics, which is now named after him. Until 1990 he was also a professor at the Kharkiv State University, where he was head of the Institute for Theoretical Nuclear Physics from 1936 and 1945 to 1975. From 1951 to 1964 he was also head of the Radio Technical Academy of Artillery in Kharkiv. From 1964 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR .
From 1944 to 1952 he researched with Pomeranchuk in “Laboratory No. 2” (later the Kurchatov Institute ) in Moscow on neutron kinetics in nuclear reactors . These theoretical investigations on the physics of nuclear reactors, which were fundamental for the Soviet Union (carried out in parallel in Germany by Heisenberg and co-workers and in the USA by Enrico Fermi , Eugene Wigner and others), were only released and published much later, but were widely used in the Russian nuclear institutes. With Pomeranschuk he also investigated other nuclear reactions and the theory of inelastic scattering of neutrons in crystals. In the late 1940s, Achijeser also pioneered the study of various plasma instabilities and oscillations. He was also involved in theoretical studies on the design of particle accelerators. He studied magnetoacoustic waves and diffraction scattering in nuclear reactions. In 1953 the famous QED textbook with Vladimir B. Berestetski "Quantum Electrodynamics" appeared, which was translated into English in 1957. Calculation of various phenomena of QED was one of the main subjects of Achijeser and his students, e.g. B. Scattering of ultra-relativistic electrons in crystals and coherent bremsstrahlung (a topic he dealt with as early as the 1930s). In the 1990s he investigated phase transitions in nuclear matter and quark plasmas within Landau's theory of Fermi fluids.
Achijeser was known for the quality of his lectures. He went completely blind in the 1990s.
In 1949 he received the L. Mandelstam Prize from the Russian Academy of Sciences . In 1986 he received the Ukrainian State Prize. In 1995 he received the NN Bogolyubov Prize. In 1998 he received the Pomeranchuk Prize . In 2000 he received the Davydov Prize of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
He is the younger brother of the mathematician Naum Ilyich Achijeser .
Fonts
Achijeser wrote 16 monographs and 11 other books:
- with Wladimir Berestetski "Quanten-Elektrodynamik", Frankfurt am Main, Harri Deutsch 1962 (German edition), Russian original: Moscow, Gostechizdat, 1953, Nauka 1959, 4th edition 1981, English "Quantum Electrodynamics", New York, Consultants Bureau 1957 , 2nd edition, Wiley 1965
- with Pomeranschuk: Some problems in the theory of nuclei, Moscow, Gostechizdat, 1948, 2nd edition 1953 (Russian)
- with Baryakhtar , Peletminskii: Spin Waves, North Holland 1968 (Russian 1967)
- with I. Achijeser, R. Polovin, A. Sitenko, K. Stepanov: Collective Excitations in Plasmas, Oxford, Pergamon Press 1965 (Russian 1964)
- with M. Rekalo: Electrodynamics of Hadrons, Kiev 1983 (Russian)
- with Sitenko, Tartakovskii: Nuclear Electrodynamics, Springer 1994 (Russian: Kiev 1989)
- with I. Achijeser, R. Polovin, A. Sitenko, K. Stepanov: Plasma Electrodynamics, 2 volumes, Pergamon Press 1975 (Russian 1974)
- with Peletminskii: Fields and Fundamental Interactions, Taylor and Francis 2002 (Russian "Theory of Fundamental Interactions", Kiev 1993)
- with Shulga: High Energy Electrodynamics in Matter, Gordon and Breach 1996 (Russian 1993)
- with SVPeletminskii: Methods of Statistical Physics, Pergamon Press 1981 (Russian 1977)
- with Bereznoy, Filipenko: Nuclear Diffraction, Harwood Academic / Gordon and Breach 1998
- with Landau, Lifschitz “Mechanics and Molecular Physics” (basic course in physics), Moscow, Nauka 1965, 1969 (Russian), Achijeser also wrote a corresponding volume on electrodynamics, Kiev 1981
- with Pomeranschuk: Introduction to the theory of neutron-multiplying systems (reactors), Moscow, IzdAT 2002 (Russian)
Popular science books (Russian or Ukrainian):
- Evolution of the physical world view, 1973 (Ukrainian), 1998
- with M. Rekalo: Physics of Elementary Particles, Kiev 1979
- with M. Rekalo: Biography of Elementary Particles, Kiev 1979, 1983
- with Rekalo: Elementary Particles, Moscow 1986
- with Yu. Stepanowsky: From the quanta of light to colored quarks, 1993
Web links
- Pomeranchuk Prize winners 1998. itep.ru
- NF Shul'ga, SV Peletminskii, AP Rekalo: Obituary . In: PROBLEMS OF ATOMIC SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. No. 6 , 2001, p. 5–10 (English, kharkov.ua [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).
References
- ↑ Achijeser, Pomeranschuk “Scattering of Light by Light”, Nature, Vol. 138, 1936, p. 206, “About the scattering of light to light”, Physical Journal of the Soviet Union, Vol. 11, 1937
- ↑ Achijeser describes his memories of it in Physics Today, June 1994
- ↑ Achijeser "On the sound absorption in solids", magazine Exp.Theor.Physik (JETP) vol. 18, 1938, p. 1318 (Russian), "On the absorption of sound in metals", Journal Physics USSR, vol. 1 , 1939, pp. 289-298
- ^ Website of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ( Memento of November 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) - Akhiezer Alexander Ylych member's page
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Achijeser, Alexander Ilyich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ахие́зер, Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Soviet-Ukrainian theoretical physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 31, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tscherykau , today Belarus |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 4, 2000 |
| Place of death | Kharkiv , Ukraine |