Vitali Lazarevich Ginzburg, Nobel Prize in Physics, 2003

Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg ForMemRS (Russian: Вита́лий Ла́заревич Ги́нзбург) was a Soviet and Russian theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, Nobel laureate, a member of the Soviet and Russian Academies of Sciences and one of the fathers of Soviet hydrogen bomb. He was the successor to Igor Tamm as head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FIAN), and an outspoken atheist.

Biography

He was born to a Jewish family in Moscow in 1916, the son of an engineer Lazar Yefimovich Ginzburg and a doctor Augusta Felgenauer, and graduated from the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University in 1938. He defended his candidate's (Ph.D.) dissertation in 1940, and his doctor's dissertation in 1942. In 1944, he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Among his achievements are a partially phenomenological theory of superconductivity, the Ginzburg-Landau theory, developed with Lev Landau in 1950; the theory of electromagnetic wave propagation in plasmas (for example, in the ionosphere); and a theory of the origin of cosmic radiation. He is also known to biologists as being part of the group of scientists that helped bring down the reign of the politically connected anti-Mendelian agronomist Trofim Lysenko, thus allowing modern genetic science to return to the USSR.

In 1937, Ginzburg married Olga Zamsha.

In 1946 he married his second wife, Nina Ginzburg (nee Yermakova), who had spent more than a year in custody on fabricated charges of plotting to assassinate the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Ginzburg was the editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk. He also headed the Academic Department of Physics and Astrophysics Problems, which Ginzburg founded at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1968.

Ginzburg identified himself as a secular Jew, and following the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union, he was very active in Jewish life, especially in Russia, where he served on the board of directors of the Russian Jewish Congress. He is also well known for fighting anti-Semitism and supporting the state of Israel.

In the 2000s (decade) Ginzburg was politically active, supporting the Russian liberal opposition and human rights movement. He defended Igor Sutyagin and Valentin Danilov against charges of espionage put forth by the authorities. On April 2, 2009, in an interview to the Radio Liberty Ginzburg denounced the FSB as an institution harmful to Russia and the ongoing expansion of its authority as a return to Stalinism.

Ginzburg worked at the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of Soviet and Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow since 1940. Russian Academy of Sciences is a major institution where mostly all Nobel Prize laureates of physics from Russia have done their studies and/or research works.

Stance on religion

Ginzburg was an avowed atheist, both under the militantly atheist Soviet government and in post-Communist Russia when religion made a strong revival. He criticized clericalism in the press and wrote several books devoted to the questions of religion and atheism. Because of this, some Orthodox Christian groups denounced him and said no science award could excuse his verbal attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church. He was one of the signers of the Open letter to the President Vladimir V. Putin from the Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences against clericalisation of Russia.

Death

A spokeswoman for the Russian Academy of Sciences, announced that Ginzburg died in Moscow on November 8, 2009, from cardiac arrest. He had been suffering from ill health for several years, and three years before his death said "In general, I envy believers. I am 90, and [am] being overcome by illnesses. For believers, it is easier to deal with them and with life's other hardships. But what can be done? I cannot believe in resurrection after death."

Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to Ginzburg's family, saying "We bid farewell to an extraordinary personality whose outstanding talent, exceptional strength of character and firmness of convictions evoked true respect from his colleagues". President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, in his letter of condolences, described Ginzburg as a "top physicist of our time whose discoveries had a huge impact on the development of national and world science."

Ginzburg was buried on 11 November in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, the resting place of many famous politicians, writers and scientists of Russia.

Honors and awards

• Stalin Prize in 1953
• Lenin Prize in 1966
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1991
• Wolf Prize in Physics in 1994/5
• Lomonosov Gold Medal in 1995 - for outstanding achievement in the field of theoretical physics and astrophysics
• Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003, together with Alexei Alexeevich Abrikosov and Anthony James Leggett for their *"pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids"
• Order of Merit for the Fatherland;
• 1st class (4 October 2006) - for outstanding contribution to the development of national science and many years of fruitful activity
• 3rd class (3 October 1996) - for outstanding scientific achievements and the training of highly qualified personnel
• Order of Lenin (1954)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour, twice (1956, 1986)
• Order of the Badge of Honour, twice (1954, 1975)
• Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" (1946)
• Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow" (1948)
• Medal "For Valiant Labour. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1970)
• Vavilov Gold Medal (1995) - for outstanding work in physics, including a series of papers on the theory of radiation by uniformly moving sources

ויטאלי לזרביץ' גינזבורג (4 באוקטובר 1916 - 8 בנובמבר 2009) היה פיזיקאי ואסטרופיזיקאי יהודי רוסי, חבר האקדמיה הרוסית למדעים, יורשו של איגור תם בראשות המחלקה לפיזיקה תאורטית במכון לפיזיקה של האקדמיה (FIAN). חתן פרס נובל לפיזיקה לשנת 2003.

קורות חיים

גינזבורג נולד למשפחה יהודית במוסקבה ב-1916. הוא סיים את לימודי הפיזיקה במוסקבה ב 1938. ב-1942 קיבל תואר דוקטור. החל משנת 1940 עבד במכון לבדב לפיזיקה במוסקבה. בין השגיו: ניסוח תאוריה פנומנולוגית חלקית של מוליכות על, תאוריית לנדאו-גינזבורג, אותה פיתח עם לב לנדאו ב 1950; חקר התקדמות גלים אלקטרומגנטיים בפלזמה (למשל היונוספירה) ותאוריה אודות מקור הקרינה הקוסמית. בשנות החמישים מילא גינזבורג תפקיד מפתח בפרויקט פיתוח פצצת המימן הסובייטית.

רעייתו השנייה של גינזבורג נעצרה ב-1944 ונשלחה לשלוש שנים במחנה עבודה, לאחר שהורשעה בתכנון התנקשות בסטלין. הם התחתנו בשנת 1946, לאחר שחרורה.

גינזבורג זיהה עצמו כיהודי אתאיסט, ומאז התמוטטות ברית המועצות היה פעיל מאוד בחיים היהודיים ברוסיה, היה חבר מועצת המנהלים של הקונגרס היהודי-רוסי ונודע כתומך ישראל ולוחם באנטישמיות.

פרסים ואותות כבוד

• פרס המדינה של ברית המועצות, 1953.
• פרס לנין, 1966.
• מדליית הזהב של האגודה האסטרונומית המלכותית, 1991.
• פרס וולף לפיזיקה, 1994/5.
• מדליית זהב על שם לומונוסוב, 1995.
• פרס נובל בפיזיקה, 2003, יחד עם אלכסיי אבריקוסוב ואנתוני לגט, על מחקרים בתחום העל מוליכות ועל נוזליות.
• 2 עיטורי ההצטיינות למען המולדת
• עיטור לנין
• 2 עיטורי פועלי הדגל האדום
• 2 עיטורי אות הכבוד
• אסטרואיד 8132 Vitginzburg נקרא על שמו.

https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%98%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99_...

Вита́лий Ла́заревич Ги́нзбург (21 сентября (4 октября) 1916 года, Москва — 8 ноября 2009 года, там же) — советский и российский физик-теоретик, доктор физико-математических наук (1942), профессор. Академик АН СССР (1966; член-корреспондент 1953).
Лауреат Ленинской премии (1966), Сталинской премии первой степени (1953) и Нобелевской премии по физике (2003). Член ВКП(б) с 1944 года.
Академик Международной академии астронавтики (1969; член-корреспондент 1965). Член Международного астрономического союза (1961). Иностранный член Национальной академии наук США (1981), Лондонского королевского общества (1987), Американской академии искусств и наук США (1971), Европейской Академии (1990), Академии наук Дании (1977) и др.
Народный депутат СССР от Академии наук СССР (1989—1991)