Abstract
Back in Russia Shubnikov did not return to the university, but started to study at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute
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Notes
- 1.
Founded in 1899 as the most advanced engineering school in Russia, it opened its doors to students in 1902. Now it is called the Sankt-Peterburgsky Politekhnichesky Universitet Petra Velikogo. In the past it had various names. From 1923–1924 it was called the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute and from 1924–1930 Leningrad Polytechnic Institute.
- 2.
Abram Fëdorovich Ioffe (1880–1960), who would become the godfather of Soviet physics.
- 3.
Ivan Vasilevich Obreimov (1894–1981).
- 4.
Pëtr Ivanovich Lukirsky (1896–1954).
- 5.
Viktor Robertovich Bursian (1886–1945).
- 6.
Jakov Ilich Frenkel (1894–1951).
- 7.
That Abram Ioffe who from 1906 was back in Russia ever taught at this school is not mentioned by Horst Kant in his biography of Ioffe [2]. The information here comes from [3]. From 1906 Ioffe had a position as laboratory assistant at the Polytechnic Institute, which did not come under the Ministry of Education, but under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Тhe commercial college had close connections with the Polytechnic Institute and with the Forestry Institute. The latter two were both close to the Polytechnic Institute which explains Ioffe’s involvement as a teacher. According to Kant, Ioffe taught at the faculties of electromechanics and metallurgy at the Polytechnic Institute, at the Mining Institute and at Lesgaft’s school of physiology (Ref. [2], p. 22–24), so not much time can have been left for teaching physics at another school.
- 8.
Ehrenfest’s wife was a Russian mathematician and he had spent the years from 1907–1912 at the university in St. Petersburg where he played a large and active role in introducing the new physics to Russian physicists. His influence was large, and after the revolution he again was instrumental in getting support for Russian physics and physicists from the West. In 1912 he became the successor of H.A. Lorentz as professor of theoretical physics at Leiden University.
- 9.
Founded in 1744, it became the State Porcelain Factory after the revolution and from 1925 the Leningrad Lomonosov Porcelain Factory. In 2005 it returned to its pre-Soviet name of Imperial Porcelain Factory.
- 10.
The piezoelectric effect is the phenomenon that crystals of certain materials under pressure, for instance by bending, produce an electric current and the other way round that they deform when electric voltage is applied to them. The word piezo has been derived from the Greek word piezein, which means to press.
- 11.
Ioffe’s doctoral thesis, submitted in 1905, was entitled Elastische Nachwirkung im krystallinischen Quarz. The thesis was published in book form in 1906, with an extract in Annalen der Physik (20 (1906) 919–980).
- 12.
In a single crystal the atoms are ordered in an almost perfect periodic arrangement, therefore the crystal lattice of the entire sample is continuous and unbroken to the edges of the sample, to be distinguished from a polycrystal consisting of many (microscopic) crystals (called crystallites or grains) and an amorphous solid in which there is no periodic arrangement at all.
- 13.
J. Czochralski, Ein neues Verfahren zur Messung der Kristallisationsgeschwindigkeit der Metalle [A new method for the measurement of the crystallization rate of metals], Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie 92 (1918) 219–221. Czochralski is the most frequently cited Polish scholar. See also Anna Pajaczkowska, Jan Czochralski: Brief sketch of his life and achievements, Journal of Crystal Growth 401 (2014) 5–6.
- 14.
Several others employed similar methods around this time, but it is clear that Obreimov and Shubnikov were the first. See Brian R. Pamplin ed., Crystal Growth (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1980), p. 7. It would be fairer to call this method the Tammann-Obreimov-Shubnikov method.
- 15.
In a later paper written in 1930 in Leiden on the preparation of bismuth crystals (L. Schubnikov, Über die Herstellung von Wismuteinkristallen, Proc. Roy. Acad. Amsterdam 33 (1930) 327–331) Shubnikov refers to Tammann’s 1923 book Lehrbuch der Metallographie. In this paper he also mentions the similarity with Bridgman’s method.
- 16.
A Russian version of the paper appeared in the Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society (Zhurnal Russkogo fiziko-khimicheskogo obshchestva LVIII (1927) 817–828).
- 17.
A Nicol prism is a type of polarizer, an optical device used to produce a polarized beam of light. It is made in such a way that it eliminates one of the rays by total internal reflection, i.e. the ordinary ray is eliminated and only the extraordinary ray is transmitted through the prism (Wikipedia).
- 18.
In A.V. Shubnikov’s biography by Belov and Shafranovsky nothing is said about such meetings.
- 19.
Lev Sergeevich Termen (1896–1993), better known as Leon Theremin, the inventor of the first mass-produced electronic musical instrument, the theremin. In 1927 he embarked on a lengthy tour in the West, staying in the United States until 1938 when he hurriedly returned to the Soviet Union and was put to work until 1947 in a sharazhka together with the aircraft engineer Andrej Nikolaevich Tupolev and the rocket designer Sergej Pavlovich Korolev. A sharazhka (also spelled: sharashka or sharaga) is a prison in the form of a secret research and development institution or design bureau where imprisoned scientists were set to work. In his novel The First Circle Solzhenitsyn gives an account of life in such a sharazhka.
- 20.
For more details on Shchukarev see his extensive Russian Wikipedia page.
- 21.
Aleksandra Vasilevna Timoreva (1902–1995) was also a graduate of Leningrad University, worked for a time at the Central Board of Weights and Measures (Mendeleev’s Institute) and after the war at Leningrad State University.
- 22.
She may have had latent tuberculosis, which can have been activated by the asthma.
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Reinders, L.J. (2018). Shubnikov’s Scientific Work in Leningrad; Papers with Obreimov. In: The Life, Science and Times of Lev Vasilevich Shubnikov. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72098-2_3
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