Vsevolod Konstantinovich Frederiks (or Fréedericksz; russian: Всеволод Константинович Фредерикс ; April 29, 1885,

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

– January 6, 1944, Gorkiy) was a

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

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 caus ...

. His primary contribution was in the field of

liquid crystals Liquid crystal (LC) is a state of matter whose properties are between those of conventional liquids and those of solid crystals. For example, a liquid crystal may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. Th ...

. The Frederiks transition is named after him. After high school, Frederiks attended

Geneva University The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin as a theological seminary. It remained focused on theology until the 17th centur ...

and attended the lectures of

Paul Langevin Paul Langevin (; ; 23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the ''Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes'', an ant ...

in Paris for one semester. After defending his thesis and obtaining his PhD, Frederiks decided to continue his studies at

Göttingen University Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The orig ...

. He was there for more than eight years, and with the outbreak of World War I he became a civil prisoner. During that period, he became personal assistant to

David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many a ...

. In the summer of 1918, Frederiks returned to Russia, and worked at the Institute of Physics and Biophysics in Moscow. In 1919, he became a lecturer at the University of Petrograd. He was arrested by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

in 1937. Although released before World War II, he died before reaching home.Elizabeth Wilson. ''Shostakovich: A Life Remembered'' London: Faber, 2006: p. 145

Works

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References

Bibliography

* David Dunmur & Tim Sluckin (2011) ''Soap, Science, and Flat-screen TVs: a history of liquid crystals'', pp 103–7,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. * A.S. Sonin & V.Ya. Frenkel (1995) ''Vsevolod Konstantinovich Freédericksz'', Moscow: Nauka Publishing House. 1885 births 1944 deaths Russian physicists {{Russia-physicist-stub