Ilya Mikhailovich Lifshitz (russian: Илья́ Миха́йлович Ли́фшиц; January 13, 1917 – October 23, 1982) was a leading Soviet theoretical
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...
, brother of
Evgeny Lifshitz
Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz (russian: Евге́ний Миха́йлович Ли́фшиц; February 21, 1915, Kharkiv, Russian Empire – October 29, 1985, Moscow, Russian SFSR) was a leading Soviet physicist and brother of the physicist ...
. He is known for his works in
solid state physics
Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the l ...
, electron theory of metals,
disordered systems, and the theory of
polymers
A polymer (; Greek ''poly-'', "many" + '' -mer'', "part")
is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic an ...
.
Work
Ilya Lifshitz was born into a
Ukrainian Jewish family in Kharkov,
Kharkov Governorate
The Kharkov Governorate ( pre-reform Russian: , tr. ''Khárkovskaya gubérniya'', IPA: xarʲkəfskəjə ɡʊˈbʲernʲɪjə ) was a governorate of the Russian Empire founded in 1835. It embraced the historical region of Sloboda Ukraine. From ...
,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...
(now
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.[Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invas ...]
). Together with
Arnold Kosevich Arnold Markovych Kosevich ( uk, Арнольд Маркович Косе́вич; July 7, 1928 – October 3, 2006) was a Soviet and Ukrainian physicist, known for contributions to the electron theory of metals and the theory of crystals.
Biograp ...
, in 1954 Lifshitz established the connection between the oscillation of magnetic characteristics of metals and the form of an electronic surface of Fermi (
Lifshitz–Kosevich formula) from
de Haas–van Alphen experiments.
Lifshitz was one of the founders of the theory of disordered systems.
He introduced some of the basic notions, such as
self-averaging, and discovered what is now called
Lifshitz tails and
Lifshitz singularity.
In
perturbation theory
In mathematics and applied mathematics, perturbation theory comprises methods for finding an approximate solution to a problem, by starting from the exact solution of a related, simpler problem. A critical feature of the technique is a middl ...
, Lifshitz introduced the notion of
spectral shift function, which was later developed by
Mark Krein.
A phase transition involving topological changes of the material's
Fermi surface In condensed matter physics, the Fermi surface is the surface in reciprocal space which separates occupied from unoccupied electron states at zero temperature. The shape of the Fermi surface is derived from the periodicity and symmetry of the crys ...
is called a
Lifshitz phase transition.
Starting from the late 1960s, Lifshitz started considering problems of statistical physics of polymers. Together with his students Alexander Yu. Grosberg and Alexei R. Khokhlov, Lifshitz proposed a theory of coil-to-globule transition in homopolymers and derived the formula for the conformational entropy of a polymer chain, that is referred to as the Lifshitz entropy.
[ Some problems of the statistical physics of polymer chains with volume interaction. I. M. Lifshitz, A. Yu. Grosberg, and A. R. Khokhlov. ''Rev. Mod. Phys.'' 1978, 50, 683. https://journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract/10.1103/RevModPhys.50.683 ]
References
External links
Page at KPI
1917 births
1982 deaths
Scientists from Kharkiv
People from Kharkov Governorate
Ukrainian Jews
Jewish physicists
Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Soviet Jews
Soviet physicists
Theoretical physicists
National University of Kharkiv alumni
Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute alumni
National University of Kharkiv academic personnel
Burials at Kuntsevo Cemetery
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