Grigory Samuilovich Landsberg: Physics. Elementary textbook of physics

One of the bright Soviet scientists of the early XX century - Grigory Landsberg. Physics became his calling as a child. He is famous as a researcher of the nature of light.

Biography of the scientist

In 1890 Grigori Landsberg was born in Vologda. Physics, which does not know this name today, can not be imagined. And the future scientist in the family of the senior forester and his wife Berty Boim was born.

I entered the Vologda gymnasium, but soon moved with my family to Nizhny Novgorod, where I finished my secondary education. He graduated from the gymnasium in 1908. For his excellent studies he was awarded a gold medal.

Study in Moscow

Landsberg arrives from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow. Physics here becomes his favorite subject. He enters the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University. In 1913 he received a first degree diploma. At the same time, the university decides not to leave, but to remain on the post of laboratory assistant. Soon he begins to teach Landsberg himself. Physics, which was devoted to his lectures, at that time experienced many changes. Everyone could become a pioneer.

Meanwhile Landsberg continues scientific research at the university, is getting ready to receive the title of professor in the future. He achieved it already after the October Revolution and the end of the Civil War - in 1923.

Teaching at the Moscow State University was conducted until 1951 with several interruptions.

He also worked at the Moscow Institute of Mechanics and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

Discoveries of Landsberg

Grigory Samuilovich Landsberg remained in the memory of descendants as a researcher in the field of optics and spectroscopy. In 1926 he succeeded in unprecedented experience at that time - to isolate and carefully investigate the molecular scattering of light in crystals.

In 1928, Landsberg works together with one of the founders of Russian radiophysics, Leonid Mandelstam. Together they open such a phenomenon as Raman scattering of light. Surprisingly, in parallel with them, the same discovery is made by Indian physicists at the other end of the world - Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman and Krishnan. Soviet scientists can experimentally prove the reality of the existence of light scattering on warm acoustic waves. This achievement was the main thing in the life of Landsberg. Therefore, we will talk more about it.

In 1931, a physicist identifies selective light scattering. 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 notes its development of a theoretical method for analyzing alloys and metals. Discoveries are of great practical importance. After all, this analysis is also applied to organic mixtures and, most importantly, to motor fuel.

The discoveries of Landsberg played an important role in the development, including military equipment during the Great Patriotic War. Therefore it is symbolical that on June 10, 1945, immediately after the Victory, Landsberg was awarded the highest award of the USSR - the Order of Lenin.

Textbook on Physics

Know and modern students, who such a physicist Grigory Landsberg. Elementary textbook of physics, published under his editorship, brought him such success among the current student youth. According to experts, this is the best of the existing courses devoted to the study of elementary physics. The textbook of Landsberg has gained immense popularity and does not become obsolete after a dozen years. It is worth saying that today in the shops you can find the 13th edition. So popular is this three-volume book on physics. Landsberg managed to explain the incredibly complex things with an accessible language. This kinematics, dynamics, statics, curvilinear motion, hydrostatics, molecular physics, the properties of gases, liquids and solids and much more.

Modern teachers today also note what a deep grant Landsberg has released. Elementary textbook of physics, reviews of which are still received, from the physical point of view, considers virtually all processes and phenomena existing in nature. Students note a convenient and accessible structure in which the whole course is outlined.

For a wide audience, Landsberg wrote an elementary textbook of physics. Today they use it in preparation for entering technical colleges and in the course of specialized courses. It is also available for high school students enrolled in specialized classes or schools with a technical focus. And also for all those who are engaged in self-education or are preparing to enter a higher educational institution. This textbook has been considered for many years the best domestic manual in physics, therefore it is regularly reprinted for the next generations.

Scientific activity

Grigory Landsberg made a great contribution to the development of Soviet science. He founded a commission on spectroscopy, which later himself headed. Later this commission developed so much that it was transformed into the Institute of Spectroscopy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. This happened in 1968. Today, this research institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences is based in the city of Troitsk, Moscow Region.

Landsberg deserves credit in the creation of a school of atomic and molecular spectral analysis, from which more than one dozen prominent Soviet physicists subsequently appeared.

Light Scattering

His main work - the discovery of such a phenomenon as Raman scattering of light, Landsberg together with Leonid Mandelstam made on the basis of laboratories of the Moscow State University. It was here that they began to experiment on 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.

The official announcement of his significant discovery of physics was made on April 27, 1928 during a colloquium at Moscow State University. Immediately after this, relevant 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 done in many ways by accident. If Soviet scientists put purposeful experiments trying to prove a specific hypothesis, Indian physicists searched for the components of scattered sunlight in vapors and liquids. They put relevant experiments in laboratories. Quite unexpectedly, Raman scattering of light was discovered.

According to the diaries of the researchers, for the first time they 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 Chandrasekhar Venkat Raman. With the formulation "for work on light scattering 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, Grigory Landsberg signed the so-called "letter of three hundred." This mass appeal of a large group of authoritative Soviet scientists, submitted 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-1950s. The letter was specifically directed against the Soviet agronomist and biologist Trofim Lysenko, whose approaches and methods were called unscientific. This letter marked the beginning of the so-called "Lysenkoism" - a campaign to prosecute genetic scientists in the USSR and deny genetics as a science in general.

A consequence of this was a ban on carrying out genetic research in the USSR, and Lysenko was dismissed from the post of president of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after Lenin. After this incident, the leadership of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was replaced.

Soon after, Grigory Landsberg died. He died in February 1957. The famous physicist was 67 years old.