Ginzburg, Vitaly Lazarevich
Ginzburg, Vitaly Lazarevich,
1916–2009, Russian physicist, Ph.D. Moscow State Univ., 1938. He was a researcher at Lebedev Physics Institute of the USSR (later Russian) Academy of Sciences after 1940. Ginzburg shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics with Alexei AbrikosovAbrikosov, Alexei Alekseyevich,1928–2017, Russian-American physicist, Ph.D. Institute for Physical Problems, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1951. Abrikosov was a researcher at the Institute, then from 1965 to 1988 he was a department head at the Landau Institute, USSR Academy
..... Click the link for more information. and Anthony LeggettLeggett, Sir Anthony James,
1938–, British physicist, Ph.D. Oxford, 1964. He was a professor at Sussex Univ., England, from 1967 to 1983, when he joined the faculty at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
..... Click the link for more information. for their pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids (see superconductivitysuperconductivity,
abnormally high electrical conductivity of certain substances. The phenomenon was discovered in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who found that the resistance of mercury dropped suddenly to zero at a temperature of about 4.
..... Click the link for more information. ; superfluiditysuperfluidity,
tendency of liquid helium below a temperature of 2.19°K; to flow freely, even upward, with little apparent friction. Helium becomes a liquid when it is cooled to 4.2°K;.
..... Click the link for more information. ). Ginzburg and Lev LandauLandau, Lev Davidovich
, 1908–68, Soviet physicist, b. Baku, Azerbaijan. A child prodigy in mathematics, he entered Baku Univ. at 14; at 21 he received a doctorate from the Univ. of Leningrad. In 1934 he worked with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen.
..... Click the link for more information. , who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for other research, developed a set of equations in 1950 that correctly predict a superconductor's tolerance to magnetic fields and its capacity for electrical current, providing scientists with a simple tool to address actual effects that can be measured in the lab. Ginzburg also worked on the Soviet hydrogen bomb project, made contributions to astrophysics, radio astronomy, and quantum theory, and later was an advocate for religious freedom and basic scientific research in Russia.