One of the brightest Soviet scientists at the beginning of the 20th century is Grigory Landsberg. Physics became his vocation as a child. He is famous as a researcher of the nature of light.
Biography of a scientist
Grigory Landsberg was born in Vologda in 1890. A physicist who does not know this name today cannot be imagined. And the future scientist was born in the family of the senior forester and his wife Berta Boym.
He entered the Vologda gymnasium, but soon moved with his family to Nizhny Novgorod, where he was finishing finishing secondary education. He graduated from the gymnasium in 1908. For excellent study, he was awarded a gold medal.
Studying in Moscow
Landsberg departs from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow. Physics is here becoming his favorite subject. He enters the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow State University. In 1913 he received a diploma of the first degree. At the same time, the university decides not to leave, but to remain in the position of laboratory assistant. Soon he began to teach Landsberg himself. The physics to which his lectures were devoted at that time was going through many changes. Everyone could become a discoverer.
Meanwhile, Landsberg continues scientific research at the university, is preparing to receive the title of professor in the future. He achieved it after the October Revolution and the end of the Civil War - in 1923.
He taught at Moscow State University until 1951 with several interruptions.
He also worked at the Moscow Mechanical Institute and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Landsberg Discoveries
Grigory Samuilovich Landsberg remained in the memory of posterity as a researcher in the field of optics and spectroscopy. In 1926, he was successful in an unprecedented experience of those times - to isolate and thoroughly investigate the molecular scattering of light in crystals.
In 1928 Landsberg worked together with one of the founders of Russian radiophysics, Leonid Mandelstam. Together they discover such a phenomenon as Raman scattering of light. Surprisingly, in parallel with them, the same discovery is made by Indian physicists on the other side of the world - Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman and Krishnan. Soviet scientists are able to experimentally prove the reality of the existence of light scattering by warm acoustic waves. This achievement was central to Landsberg's life. Therefore, we will talk more about him in more detail.
In 1931, a physicist reveals selective scattering of light. So begins domestic spectroscopy, a serious study of the interaction of molecules in liquids, gases and solids.
Awards and prizes
In 1941, Landsberg received the highest award of his time - the Stalin Prize. The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union thus marks its development of a theoretical method for the analysis of alloys and metals. Discoveries are of great practical importance. Indeed, such an analysis is also applied to organic mixtures and, most importantly, to motor fuel.
Landsberg's discoveries played an important role in the development, including military equipment during the Great Patriotic War. Therefore, it is symbolic that on June 10, 1945, immediately after the Victory, Landsberg was awarded the highest award of the USSR - the Order of Lenin.
Physics textbook
Modern students also know who the physicist Grigory Landsberg is. An elementary textbook of physics, published under his editorship, brought him such success among today's students. According to experts, this is the best of the existing courses on the study of elementary physics. Landsberg's textbook has gained immense popularity and does not become obsolete after decades. It is worth saying that today in the stores you can find the 13th edition. So popular is this three-volume on physics. Landsberg was able to explain incredibly complex things in an accessible language. These are kinematics, dynamics, statics, curvilinear motion, hydrostatics, molecular physics, properties of gases, liquids and solids and much more.
Modern teachers even today note what a profound manual Landsberg issued. An elementary physics textbook, reviews of which are still being received, from a physical point of view considers practically all processes and phenomena existing in nature. Students note a convenient and affordable structure, which sets out the entire course.
Landsberg wrote an elementary physics textbook to a wide audience. Today it is used in preparation for entering technical universities and during specialized courses. It is available for high school students studying in specialized classes or schools with a technical focus. And also for everyone who is engaged in self-education or is preparing to enter a higher educational institution. For many years this textbook has been considered the best domestic manual in physics, therefore it is regularly reprinted for future generations.
Scientific activity
Grigory Landsberg made a great contribution to the development of Soviet science. He founded the commission for spectroscopy, which he later headed. Later this commission developed so much that it was transformed into the Institute of Spectroscopy of the USSR Academy of Sciences. This happened in 1968. Today, this research institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences is based in the city of Troitsk, Moscow Region.
Landsberg is credited with creating a school of atomic and molecular spectral analysis, from which more than a dozen prominent Soviet physicists subsequently came out.
Light scattering
Landsberg, together with Leonid Mandelstam, made his main work - the discovery of such a phenomenon as Raman scattering of light at the laboratories of Moscow State University. It was here that they began to set up experiments to study the scattering of light in crystals by molecules. Thanks to this, they were able to practically prove the hypothesis that Mandelstam had previously put forward only theoretically.
Physicists made an official announcement of their significant discovery on April 27, 1928 during a colloquium at Moscow State University. Immediately after this, the corresponding publications were published in Soviet and two other German scientific journals.
At the same time, a similar discovery on the other side of the globe, in India, was made largely by accident. If Soviet scientists set up focused experiments trying to prove a specific hypothesis, then Indian physicists were looking for components of diffused sunlight in vapors and liquids. They put the corresponding experiments in the laboratories. Completely unexpectedly for themselves discovered the Raman scattering of light.
According to researchers' diaries, they first observed this phenomenon on February 28, about a week after it was observed by Soviet physicists.
Despite this, in 1930 the Nobel Committee awarded the annual physics prize to Chandrasekhara Venkat Raman. With the wording "for work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect", named after the scientist. In world practice, especially in foreign technical literature, this phenomenon is still called the "Raman effect."
"Letter of three hundred"
In 1955, Gregory Landsberg signed the so-called "letter of three hundred." This is a mass appeal of a large group of reputable Soviet scientists, presented to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
The main goal of the authors of the letter was to criticize the development of Soviet biology in the mid-50s of the XX century. The letter was specifically directed against the Soviet agronomist and biologist Trofim Lysenko, whose approaches and methods were called unscientific. It was this letter that laid the foundation for the so-called "Lysenkoism" - a campaign to prosecute genetic scientists in the USSR and deny genetics as a science in general.
The consequence of this was a ban on genetic research in the USSR, and Lysenko was fired from his post as president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. After this incident, the leadership of the Soviet Academy of Sciences also changed.
Soon after, Grigory Landsberg passed away. He died in February 1957. The famous physicist was 67 years old.