Yuri Alexandrovich Krutkov

Yuri Alexandrowitsch Krutkow ( Russian Юрий Александрович Крутков ; born May 29, 1890 in Saint Petersburg , † September 12, 1952 in Leningrad ) was a Russian and Soviet physicist . Together with the Hertz group, he was involved in the Soviet atomic bomb project. Despite his services to the armaments of the USSR, he was temporarily persecuted and imprisoned by the NKVD .

biography

Krutkow grew up in a family of intellectuals in Saint Petersburg. His family moved to Ukraine , where his father worked as the director of a high school in Slatopol ( Kirovohrad Oblast ) and Lubny ( Poltava Oblast ). In 1906 the family returned to Petersburg, two years later Krutkow enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty of the Saint Petersburg University . There he studied with Russian scholars and joined student groups of the time. The physicist Paul Ehrenfest had a particular influence on him . In 1915 he graduated from the university and prepared for the professorship. From 1918 he participated in the establishment of a Soviet physics research, taught at the newly founded Petrograd Polytechnic Institute and participated in the atomic commission newly founded at the State Optical Institute.

In 1919 Krutkow defended his dissertation on " adiabatic invariants", which appeared in 1921. In the same year he became professor at the Petrograd University and head physicist at the Physico-Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences . In 1922 he became chairman of the physics section of the Russian Society for Physical Chemistry, in 1924 he worked in the main chamber for weights and measures.

In 1922 he received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation , which enabled him to travel to Germany and the Netherlands to buy equipment and books. On the trip he met famous physicists such as Albert Einstein , Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Peter Debye . Krutkow recognized errors in Einstein's reception of Friedmann's cosmological theories, which Einstein later admitted. Then Krutkow traveled several times to Germany, u. a. to Göttingen , Hamburg and Berlin .

In the 1930s Krutkov taught at the Leningrad University, at the Military Academy of the Air Force “Prof. NJ Zhukovsky “ , headed the chair of theoretical mechanics of the Military Mechanical Engineering Institute, worked in the theoretical physics section of the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In 1933 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

He was arrested on December 30, 1936 in connection with the Pulkovo affair and sentenced to 10 years in prison on May 25, 1937 as part of the Great Terror of 1937. Thanks to the advocacy of the scientist and academician Alexei Nikolayevich Krylov , he was given the opportunity to work in his specialty while in custody. He was released from prison on March 4, 1947 and was able to resume teaching at Leningrad University after his return to Leningrad. He headed the Chair of Mechanics at the Mathematical-Mechanical Faculty of Leningrad State University.

1946–1947 he worked with the German atomic scientists of the Gustav Hertz group in Sukhumi . For this activity he was awarded the Stalin Prize 2nd level in 1951 together with Heinz Barwich and Gustav Hertz . Their results in researching the dynamics, gas diffusion and separation of isotopes were later used in the industrial complex in Novouralsk .

He died on September 12, 1952 after a serious heart disease. Shortly before his death, he learned of the award of the Stalin Prize for his work in the field of atomic physics.

He was posthumously rehabilitated by the USSR Military Tribunal on August 8, 1957. On December 13, 1957, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences returned him post mortem the rights as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Honors

• 1933 Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
• 1934 honorary doctorate in physical and mathematical sciences
• 1951 Stalin Prize 2nd stage

Publications

• Adiabatic invariants and their applications in theoretical physics , Berlin 1921.
• Tensor of stress functions and general solutions in statics of the theory of elasticity , Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1949 (Russian).

literature

• V. Yes. Frenkel: Juri Alexandrowitsch Krutkow (PDF; 2.6 MB), 1970 (Russian).
• Ju. A. Chramov: Physicist: Biographisches Lexikon, Moscow, Nauka, 1983 (Russian).
• Autobiography, reactions, memories (PDF; 101 kB). The same text in: "Physicists about themselves", Leningrad, Nauka, 1990 (Russian).

Web links

• Krutkov on the side of the theoretical physics department of the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the RF (Russian)
• Krutkov on the side of the chair of statistical physics at St. Petersburg University (Russian)
• Krutkov on the side of the outstanding mathematicians (Russian)
• Biographical information on Yuri Krutkow (Russian)