Ilya Mikhailovich Lifshitz (russian: Илья́ Миха́йлович Ли́фшиц; January 13, 1917 – October 23, 1982) was a leading Soviet theoretical
physicist, brother of
Evgeny Lifshitz. 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.
Work
Ilya Lifshitz was born into a
Ukrainian Jewish family in Kharkov,
Kharkov Governorate,
Russian Empire (now
Kharkiv,
Ukraine). 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, 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 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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