Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich
( be, Я́каў Бары́савіч Зяльдо́віч, russian: Я́ков Бори́сович Зельдо́вич; 8 March 1914 – 2 December 1987), also known as YaB,
was a leading Soviet
physicist of
Belarusian origin, who is known for his prolific contributions in physical
cosmology, physics of
thermonuclear reactions, combustion, and
hydrodynamical
In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) and ...
phenomena.
From 1943, Zeldovich, a self-taught physicist, started his career by playing a crucial role in the development of the former
Soviet program of nuclear weapons. In 1963, he returned to academia to embark on pioneering contributions on the fundamental understanding of the
thermodynamics of
black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...
s and expanding the scope of physical cosmology.
Biography
Early life and education
Yakov Zeldovich was born into a
Belarusian Jewish family in his grandfather's house in
Minsk.
However, in mid-1914, the Zeldovich family moved to
Saint Petersburg. They resided there until August 1941, when the family was evacuated together with the faculty of the
Institute of Chemical Physics
The Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics (IPCP)See the web sitInstitute of Problems of Chemical Physics RAS (russian: Институт проблем химической физики РАН) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) is the la ...
to
Kazan to avoid the
Axis Invasion of the
Soviet Union.
They remained in Kazan until the summer of 1943, when Zeldovich moved to
Moscow.
His father, Boris Naumovich Zeldovich, was a
lawyer
A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
; his mother, Anna Petrovna Zeldovich (
née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
Kiveliovich), a translator from
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
to
Russian, was a member of the
Writer's Union.
Despite being born into a devoted and religious Jewish family, Zeldovich was an "absolute
atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
".
Zeldovich was an
autodidact
Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning and self-teaching) is education without the guidance of masters (such as teachers and professors) or institutions (such as schools). Generally, autodidacts are individua ...
. He was regarded as having a remarkably versatile intellect, and during his life he explored and made major contributions to a wide range of scientific endeavors.
From a given opportunity in May 1931, he secured an appointment as a laboratory assistant at the
Institute of Chemical Physics
The Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics (IPCP)See the web sitInstitute of Problems of Chemical Physics RAS (russian: Институт проблем химической физики РАН) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) is the la ...
of the
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, and remained associated with the institute for the remainder of his life.
As a laboratory assistant, he received preliminary instructions on the topics involved in the
physical chemistry and built up his reputation among his seniors at the Institute of Chemical Physics.
From 1932 to 1934, Zeldovich attended the undergraduate courses on
physics and
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
at the Leningrad State University (now
Saint Petersburg State University
Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...
), and later attended the technical lectures on introductory physics at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (now
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University).
In 1936, he was successful in his candidacy for the
Candidate of Science degree (a Soviet equivalent of
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
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** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
), having successfully defended his dissertation on the topic of the "
adsorption and
catalysis on heterogeneous surfaces".
The centrality of his thesis focused towards the research on the ''Freundlich (or classical) adsorption isotherm'', and Zeldovich discovered the theoretical foundation of this empirical observation.
In 1939, Zeldovich prepared his dissertation based on the mathematical theory of the physical interpretation of
nitrogen oxidation, and successfully received the
Doctor of Sciences in
mathematical physics when it was reviewed by
Alexander Frumkin.
Zeldovich discovered its mechanism, known in
physical chemistry as the
thermal mechanism or
Zeldovich mechanism.
Soviet program of nuclear weapons
Zeldovich is regarded as a secret principal of the
Soviet nuclear weapons project; his travels abroad were highly restricted, to
Eastern Europe, under close Soviet security.
Soon after the discovery of
nuclear fission
Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radio ...
(by German chemist
Otto Hahn in 1939) Russian physicists had begun investigating the scope of nuclear-fission physics, and undertook seminars on that topic;
Igor Kurchatov and
Yulii Khariton were engaged in 1940.
In May 1941, Zeldovich worked with Khariton in constructing a theory, on the kinetics of nuclear reactions in the presence of the
critical conditions.
The work of Khariton and Zeldovich was extended into theories of ignition,
combustion and
detonation; these accounted for features which had not previously been correctly predicted, observed, nor explained.
The modern theory of detonation accordingly is called the
Zeldovich-von Neumann-Dohring, or ZND, theory, and its development involved tedious
fast neutron calculations; this work had been delayed, due to the
German invasion German invasion may refer to:
Pre-1900s
* German invasion of Hungary (1063)
World War I
* German invasion of Belgium (1914)
* German invasion of Luxembourg (1914)
World War II
* Invasion of Poland
* German invasion of Belgium (1940)
...
of the
Soviet Union, which obstructed progress on findings that in June 1941 would be de-classified.
In 1942, Zeldovich was relocated to
Kazan, and tasked by the
People's Commissariat of Munitions to carry out work on conventional
gun powders to be supplied to the
Soviet Army, while Khariton was asked to design the new types of conventional weaponry.
In 1943,
Joseph Stalin decided to launch an
arms build-up of
nuclear weapons
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
, under the charge of
Igor Kurchatov; the latter requested Stalin to relocate Zeldovich and Khariton to Moscow, in the nuclear weapons program.
Zeldovich joined
Igor Kurchatov's small team at this secretive laboratory in
Moscow to launch the work on the nuclear combustion theory, and became a head of the theoretical department at the
Arzamas-16 in 1946.
With
Isaak Gurevich
Isaac was one of the patriarchs of the Abrahamic faiths.
Isaac may also refer to:
* Isaac (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname of Isaac and its variants
Organizations
* International Society ...
,
Isaak Pomeranchuk, and Khariton, Zeldovich prepared a scientific report on the feasibility of releasing energy through nuclear fusion triggered by an atomic explosion, and presented it to Igor Kurchatov.
Zeldovich had benefitted from physical and technical knowledge provided by German physicist
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly aft ...
and American physicist
Theodore Hall, who each had worked on the American
Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons.
In 1949, Zeldovich led a team of physicists that conducted the first
nuclear test, the
RDS-1, based roughly on the
American design obtained through the
atomic spies in the
United States, though he continued his fundamental work on explosive theory.
Zeldovich then began working on modernizing the successive
designs of the
nuclear weapon and initially conceived the idea of
hydrogen bomb
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
to
Andrei Sakharov and others.
In the course of his work on nuclear weapons, Zeldovich did ground-breaking work in radiation hydrodynamics, and the physics of matter at high pressure. Among his younger colleagues in
Sarov who worked in this area was
Mihail Aleksandrovich Podurets, also known for his contribution to the theory of gravitational collapse
Between 1950 and 1953, Zeldovich performed calculations necessary for the feasibility of the
hydrogen bomb
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
that were verified by
Andrei Sakharov, although the two groups worked in parallel on the development of the thermonuclear fusion. However, it was Sakharov that radically changed the approach to thermonuclear fusion, aided by
Vitaly Ginzburg in 1952.
He remained associated with the nuclear testing program, while heading the experimental laboratories at
Arzamas-
16 until October 1963, when he left for academia.
Academia and cosmology
In 1952, Zeldovich began work in the field of
elementary particles and their transformations. He predicted the
beta decay of a
pi meson. Together with
Semyon Gershtein he noticed the analogy between the
weak
Weak may refer to:
Songs
* "Weak" (AJR song), 2016
* "Weak" (Melanie C song), 2011
* "Weak" (SWV song), 1993
* "Weak" (Skunk Anansie song), 1995
* "Weak", a song by Seether from '' Seether: 2002-2013''
Television episodes
* "Weak" (''Fear t ...
and
electromagnetic interactions, and in 1960, he predicted the
muon
A muon ( ; from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it) is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 '' e'' and a spin of , but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As wi ...
catalysis (more precisely, the muon-catalysed dt-fusion) phenomenon. In 1977, Zeldovich together with was awarded the
Kurchatov Medal, the highest award in nuclear physics of the Soviet Union. The citation was "for prediction of characteristics of ultracold
neutrons, their detection and investigation". He was elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences on 20 June 1958. He was a head of division at the
Institute of the Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1965 until January 1983.
In early 1960s, Zeldovich started working in
astrophysics
Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...
and
physical cosmology. In 1964, he and independently
Edwin Salpeter were the first to suggest that
accretion discs around massive
black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...
s are responsible for the huge amounts of energy radiated by
quasars. From 1965, he was a professor at the Department of Physics of the
Moscow State University and a head of the division of
Relativistic Astrophysics
Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...
at the
Sternberg Astronomical Institute. In 1966, he and
Igor Novikov were the first to propose searching for black hole candidates among binary systems in which one star is optically bright and X-ray dark and the other optically dark but X-ray bright (the black hole candidate).
Zeldovich worked on the theory of the evolution of the hot universe, the properties of the
microwave background radiation
In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all spac ...
, the
large-scale structure of the universe, and the theory of
black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...
s. He predicted, with
Rashid Sunyaev, that the cosmic microwave background should undergo inverse
Compton scattering. This is called the
Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, and measurements by telescopes such as the
Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the
South Pole Telescope has established it as one of the key observational probes of cluster cosmology. Zeldovich contributed sharp insights into the nature of the large scale structure of the universe, in particular, through the use of Lagrangian perturbation theory (the Zeldovich approximation) and the application of the Burgers' equation approach via the adhesion approximation.
In 1974, in collaboration with A. G. Polnarev, suggested the existence of a
gravitational memory effect
Gravitational memory effects, also known as gravitational-wave memory effects are predicted persistent changes in the relative position of pairs of masses in space due to the passing of a gravitational wave. Detection of gravitational memory effect ...
, for which a system of freely falling particles initially at relative rest are displaced after the passing of a burst of
gravitational radiation
Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity generated by the accelerated masses of an orbital binary system that propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1 ...
.
Black hole thermodynamics
Zeldovich played a key role in developing the theory of
black hole evaporation
Hawking radiation is theoretical black body radiation that is theorized to be released outside a black hole's event horizon because of relativistic quantum effects. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who developed a theoretical a ...
due to
Hawking radiation. Zeldovich and
Charles W. Misner concomitantly predicted the possibility of particles generation by rotating
Kerr black holes in
1971 *
The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses ( February 25, July 22 and August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 10, and August 6).
The world population increased by 2.1% this year, the highest increase in history.
Events
Ja ...
,
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, me ...
. Previously, In 1965, Zeldovich had predicted that Kerr black holes would split the emission lines of photons as in a Zeeman effect During
Stephen Hawking's visit to
Moscow in 1973, Soviet scientists Zeldovich and
Alexei Starobinsky
Alexei Alexandrovich Starobinsky (russian: Алексе́й Алекса́ндрович Староби́нский; born 19 April 1948) is a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist and cosmologist. He received the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics "for p ...
showed Hawking that, according to the quantum mechanical
uncertainty principle,
rotating black holes should create and emit particles.
Family
With his wife, Varvara Pavlovna Konstantinova, Yakov Zeldovich had a son and two daughters who were also physicists: son –
Boris Zeldovich
Boris Yakovlevich Zeldovich (russian: Бори́с Я́ковлевич Зельдо́вич; 23 April 1944 – 16 December 2018) was a Russian-American physicist and a son of the famous Soviet physicist Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich. He was doctor ...
;
daughters – Olga Yakovlevna Zeldovich and Marina Yakovlevna Zeldovich.
Zeldovich also had a daughter, Annushka, with O.K. Shiryaeva.
Zeldovich had another son with Nina Nikolaevna Agapova in 1958, whose name was Leonid Yakovlevich Agapov; he died in 2016 at the age of 58.
Publications
Books
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Awards and honors
Igor Kurchatov called him a "genius" and
Andrei Sakharov named him "a man of universal scientific interests." After the first meeting in Moscow,
Stephen W. Hawking wrote to Zeldovich: "now I know that you are a real person and not a group of scientists like
Bourbaki." He was a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1975), the United States
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
(1979), and the
American Philosophical Society (1979).
*
Dirac Medal of the ICTP
The Dirac Medal is the name of four awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations, named in honour of Professor Paul Dirac, one of the great theoretical physicists of the ...
(1985)
*
Bruce Medal (1983)
*
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1984).
*
Kurchatov Medal (1977)
*Three times
Hero of Socialist Labor (1949, 1953, 1957)
*
Stalin Prize (1943, 1949, 1951, 1953)
*
Lenin Prize (1957)
*Three
Orders of Lenin (1949, 1962, 1974)
*Two
Orders of the Red Banner of Labour (1945,1964)
*
Order of the October Revolution (1962)
*An
asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.
...
11438 Zeldovich was named in his honor in 2001
References
Further reading
* Overbye, D. ''Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe''. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Annotated Bibliography for Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues– page at the
Moscow State University dedicated to Zeldovich
Theory of combustion of unmixed gases – Zeldovich 1949, translated 1974
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zeldovich, Yakov Borisovich
1914 births
1987 deaths
Scientists from Minsk
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Moscow State University faculty
Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Stalin Prize winners
Lenin Prize winners
Recipients of the Bruce Medal
Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Belarusian atheists
Belarusian Jews
Soviet astronomers
Belarusian astronomers
Soviet cosmologists
Fluid dynamicists
Jewish atheists
Jewish scientists
Particle physicists
Soviet inventors
Belarusian inventors
Jewish physicists
Members of the American Philosophical Society