Aleksander Ilyich Akhiezer - Biography

Aleksander Ilyich Akhiezer (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Ахие́зер) (October 31, 1911 - May 4, 2000) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, known for his scientific contributions to quantum electrodynamics, three hundred articles and eleven scientific books in his area.

Akhiezer was born in Cherykaw in what is now Mahilyow Voblast, Belarus. He studied radio engineering at Kiev Polytechnic Institute 1929-34, and joined his elder mathematician brother Naum Ilyich Akhiezer for studies at Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. With Isaak Pomeranchuk and under the supervision of Lev Landau, he studied light-light scattering and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1936. When Landau left in 1938, Akhiezer was given the position as head of Theoretical Physics. A treatise on wave absorption in modulated quasiparticles gave him a habilitation degree in 1941, since when he was full professor at the same place until his passing at the age of 89. With Cyril Sinelnikov and Anton K. Valter he founded the faculty of physics and technology. With Pomeranchuk he studied neutron scattering and plasma physics at the Kurchatov nuclear physics institute in Moscow (1944–52).

Awards

• 1949 L. I. Mandelshtam Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
• 1998 Pomeranchuk Prize

Books

• First Russian book on nuclear reactions (1945)
• Quantum electrodynamics (1965)
• General physics: Mechanical and Molecular Physics (1965). With Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz
• Spin waves (1968). With Viktor G. Baryakhtar and Sergei V. Peletminskii.
• Evolving physical picture of the world (1973 in Russian; updated version 1996 in English)
• Plasma electrodynamics (1975)
• Physics of elementary particles (1979), Elementary Particles (1986) and Biography of elementary particles (1979). With Mikhail P. Rekalo.
• From quanta of light to colour quarks (1993). With Yu. P. Stepanovsky.