Semyon Emmanuilovich Chaikin

Semyon Emmanuilovich Chaikin ( Russian Семён Эммануилович Хайкин , English transcription Semen Emmanuilovich Khaikin ; born August 8 ^{. Jul} / 21st August 1901 ^greg. In Minsk ; † 30 July 1968 in Leningrad ) was a Russian physicist and radio astronomer .

Chaikin was a volunteer in the Red Army in the Russian Civil War. As a student of Leonid Isaakowitsch Mandelstam , he initially dealt with viscosity, friction and vibrations (both theoretically and experimentally) and in 1937 was co-author with Alexander Alexandrowitsch Andronow and Alexander Adolfowitsch Witt of a well-known monograph on the theory of vibrations and perturbation theory of nonlinear systems. He taught for 16 years as a professor at Lomonosov University , where he was dean of the physics faculty. He was considered an excellent organizer and was also known for his outstanding lectures.

After the Second World War (in which he was active in national defense) he dealt with radio astronomy. He theoretically investigated antennas and receivers and the limits of their sensitivity due to background fluctuations in the cosmos and predicted that observation in the centimeter wavelength range would become of particular importance for radio astronomy. With Naum Lwowitsch Kaidanowski he developed a radio telescope with a variable reflector profile, first implemented in the Pulkowo radio telescope. There at the Pulkovo Observatory and at the Lebedev Institute he was one of the initiators of Russian radio astronomy and researched observational radio astronomy.

Fonts (selection)

with AA Andronov, AA Witt: Theory of vibrations. Edited by Fritz Wiegmann. 2 volumes. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1965
Radio astronomy, Moscow: Znanie 1954 (Russian)

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personal data
SURNAME	Chaikin, Semyon Emmanuilovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Khaikin, Semen Emmanuilovich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian physicist and radio astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 21, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	Minsk
DATE OF DEATH	July 30, 1968
Place of death	Leningrad