Ivan Vasilyevich Obreimov

From left: IW Obreimow, NN Semjonow , P. Ehrenfest , AF Joffe , AA Tschernyschow , 1924.

Ivan Vasilyevich Obreimow ( Russian Иван Васильевич Обреимов ., Scientific transliteration Ivan Vasil'evič Obreimov * February 24 ^{. Jul} / 8. March  1894 ^greg. In Annecy / France ; † 2. December 1981 in Moscow ) was a Russian physicist . He was a specialist in solid state physics , especially low temperature spectroscopy . Among other things, he wrote important papers on absorption spectra and the luminescence of crystals at low temperatures .

Life

Obreimow was born in France to Russian parents, his father was a math teacher. In 1911 he began to study physics at St. Petersburg University, which he completed in 1914/1915. He first worked in the Petersburg factory for optical glass (later: ЛенЗОС / LenSOS) and then (1919 to 1924) was appointed to the State Institute of Optics. From 1920 he taught physics at the Leningrad State University and (until 1928) at the Polytechnic Institute.

In 1923 he was appointed head of the Molecular Physics Laboratory at the Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute (ЛФТИ). In 1929 he rose to become the first director of the newly founded Ukrainian Physical-Technical Institute in Kharkiv (УФТИ / UFTI). Between 1927 and 1930 he traveled several times to Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain in order to purchase equipment for his institutes.

As a non-party scientist Obreimov was replaced in 1933 in his post as director of the UFTI by the communist Alexander Ilyich Leipunski (Лейпунский). He himself took over the chairmanship of the physical-technical council and headed the laboratory for the physics of crystals at the institute.

In July 1938 he was arrested in Kharkiv on charges of espionage for Germany and England and alleged activities for Trotskyist organizations. As an inmate in prison in Kiev and Moscow, he wrote the treatise on the use of Fresnel diffraction for physical measurements ( О приложении френелевой дифракции к физическим измерениям ) and handed it in December 1939 to the investigating authority of the NKVD . He used the work to ask him to work and publish again in his research area. In November 1940 he was sentenced to eight years in a "corrective labor camp" for "anti-Soviet statements" and sent to Kotlas in Arkhangelsk Oblast , where he was used in loading work.

Several submissions from his fellow scientists, from whom, for example, Pyotr Kapiza , member of the Academy of Sciences and later Nobel Prize laureate , addressed Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov directly , led to the termination of the proceedings in May 1941 and Obreimov's release from the camp. He was evacuated to Ufa and worked there in the physical-chemical institute of the Academy of Sciences. In 1942 he was transferred to the State Institute for Optics, evacuated from Leningrad to Yoshkar-Ola , where he was promoted to head of the optical laboratory in 1944. In 1946 he received the Stalin Prize for his work in the field of optics and crystals . Since 1950 he worked again in Moscow; he taught at the chair for general physics at the institute for mechanics. In 1954 he was accepted into the Academy of Sciences and researched at the Institute for Organic Element Compounds there until 1965, then at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry.

Obreimov received numerous awards from the Soviet Union, including the Order of Lenin in 1974 .