Leonid Isaakowitsch Mandelstam

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Leonid Mandelstam ( Russian Леонид Исаакович Мандельштам , scientific. Transliteration Leonid Isaakovič Mandelstam ; April * 22 . Jul / 4. May  1879 greg. In Mogilev , Russian Empire , now Belarus ; † 27. November 1944 in Moscow ) was a Russian / soviet physicist .

Life

Mandelstam was born the son of a doctor in 1879 and completed his education at the high school in Odessa . He then studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Novorossiysk . Because of participation in student unrest he was expelled from the university and continued his education in Germany at the University of Strasbourg , where he received his doctorate in 1901 under Ferdinand Braun . In 1907 he became a private lecturer and in 1913 a professor. In 1907 he researched vibrations in electrical circuits and discovered important principles for the transmission of radio waves over long distances.

In 1914 Mandelstam returned to Russia. In 1925 he took over the chair for theoretical physics at the University of Moscow, where a school of theoretical physics developed. B. also the Nobel laureate in physics Igor Tamm belonged to, with whom he was also friends.

Independent of CV Raman and almost at the same time, he experimentally demonstrated Raman scattering in 1928 together with Grigori S. Landsberg . In the former Soviet Union, the term "combined light scattering" was used for Raman scattering. The Indian Nobel Prize winner and first discoverer CV Raman was kept secret in the Soviet Union and the effect itself was referred to as the Mandelstam-Landsberg effect. Only Raman, who had published first, received the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1930 - Mandelstam and his colleagues carried out precise control measurements for a long time before publication.

In 1934 the scientist moved to the Lebedev Institute of the Academy of Sciences and worked in the fields of optics, radio physics, radio technology and theoretical physics. He also successfully applied his findings from vibration research to the fields of optics, acoustics, molecular physics and quantum mechanics. Among other things, he described the physical phenomenon of parametric resonance in 1931, see Forced Vibration . Alexander Adolfowitsch Witt (1902–1938) was one of his students and close collaborators in the field of non-linear vibrations . He fell victim to the Stalinist terror in 1938 , as did Mandelstam's brother.

Mandelstam became internationally known for his work on radio wave scattering along the earth's surface. For his services Mandelstam received the Lenin Prize in 1931 , the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1940 , the Stalin Prize in 1942 and the Order of Lenin in 1944 .

In the late 1930s, Mandelstam and members of his school like Tamm fell victim to a campaign against modern physics, particularly the Special Theory of Relativity , which was classified as non-materialistic . They were temporarily forced out of the university after Boris Hessen , the deputy director of FIAN (Lebedew Institute), who had protected Mandelstam's group for many years, fell victim to the Stalinist terror in 1936. The argument continued even after Mandelstam's death. At the end of the 1940s there was a power struggle between physicists from Lomonosov University (such as Dmitri Iwanenko , AA Sokolow , JP Terletzki , AA Maximow) and the academy physicists of the Lebedev Institute, which Mandelstam had also belonged to. Espionage allegations were even raised against Mandelstam, based on his long stay in Strasbourg before 1914. In 1952 there was a dispute over Mandelstam's "philosophical errors" after the publication of the fifth and last volume of his Collected Works and his conviction (despite opposition from Vladimir Fock ) .

Other students of Mandelstam were Alexander Alexandrowitsch Andronow , Semen Emmanuilowitsch Chaikin and Michail Alexandrowitsch Leontowitsch .

His son Sergei Leonidowitsch Mandelstam was also a well-known physicist at the Institute for Spectroscopy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

literature

Web links

Notes and sources

  1. ^ Gennady Gorelik : My anti-Soviet activity , Vieweg 1995, p. 126.
  2. ↑ Sakharov Mein Leben , Piper 1991, pp. 74f.
  3. ↑ Gorelik: My anti-Soviet activity , Vieweg 1995, p. 236f.
personal data
SURNAME Mandelstam, Leonid Isaakowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leonid Isaakovič Mandelštam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-Soviet physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Mahiljou
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1944
Place of death Moscow