Alexander Ilyich Leipunski

Memorial plaque for Leipunski on his former home

Aleksandr Leipunskii ( Russian Александр Ильич Лейпунский , scientific. Transliteration Aleksandr Il'ič Lejpunskij * 24 ^{. Jul} / 7. December  1903 ^greg. In Dragli, Ujesd Sokal , government Hrodna , Russian Empire ; † 14. August 1972 ) was a Soviet physicist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences . His work mainly included atomic physics , nuclear physics and nuclear energy .

Life

Leipunski was born on December 7, 1903 in the village of Dragli in Ujesd Sokal in Galicia (now Poland ). He graduated from the Rybinsk Mechanical Technical College ( Рыбинский механический техникум ) in a distance learning course and enrolled in 1921 at the Faculty of Physics and Mechanical Engineering of the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University . In the spring of 1923 Leipunski was able to work in the laboratory of the well-known Soviet physicist and later member of the Academy of Sciences Abram Fjodorowitsch Joffe at the Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute ( ЛФТИ ). In 1928 Leipunski moved to the Kharkov Physics and Technology Institute ( Харьковский физико-технический институт ), where he first became deputy director in 1930 and finally director in 1933. At the Kharkov Physics and Technology Institute he was also head of the nuclear physics laboratory. In 1932 he and other colleagues succeeded in splitting a lithium nucleus using accelerated protons for the first time in the Soviet Union . From March to December 1935 Leipunski worked in Cambridge for nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford . In 1936 he confirmed the neutrino hypothesis put forward by Wolfgang Pauli for the first time indirectly by measuring the energy during beta decay . In 1937 Leipunski was accused of "helping the people's enemies". He was expelled from the Communist Party and removed from his post as director. On July 14, 1938, he was arrested in Kharkiv and taken to a prison in Kiev . However, due to a lack of evidence, Leipunski was released on August 8, 1938 and the proceedings were discontinued. From 1939 Leipunski became head of research that dealt with uranium fission. In 1940 he also worked on building the cyclotron particle accelerator . Leipunski subsequently took part in the work of the Soviet Academy of Sciences on nuclear fission. From 1941 to 1944 he was also director of the Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences, where in 1944 he created the Department of Nuclear Physics. In 1944 Leipunski became director of the Institute for Physics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and also headed the ITEF (Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics) sector there . In addition, he was the dean of the MIFI ( Московский инженерно-физический институт ) and also held a chair there. From 1949 Leipunski headed the Physikalisch-Energetisches Institut in Obninsk and from 1950 was head of the program for the construction of a fast neutron reactor .

Awards

Leipunski received numerous awards for his work. Among other things, he received the Lenin Prize in 1960 , the title Hero of Socialist Labor in 1963 , the Order of the October Revolution , the Soviet Medal of Honor ( Орден "Знак Почёта" ) and three orders of Lenin .

Web links

• Biography on peoples.ru (Russian)
• Biography on ihst.ru (Russian)