Alexander Sergeevich Davydov (, ) (26 December 1912 – 19 February 1993) was a Soviet and Ukrainian physicist. Davydov graduated from

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

in 1939. In 1963-1990 he was Director of Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. His main contributions were in theory of absorption, scattering and dispersion of the light in molecular crystals. In 1948, he predicted the phenomenon that is known as ''Davydov splitting'' or ''factor-group splitting'', "the splitting of bands in the electronic or vibrational spectra of crystals due to the presence of more than one (interacting) equivalent molecular entity in the unit cell." In the period 1958–1960 he developed the theory of collective excited states in spherical and non-spherical nuclei, known as Davydov-Filippov Model and Davydov-Chaban Model. In 1973, Davydov applied the concept of molecular solitons in order to explain the mechanism of muscle contraction in animals. He studied theoretically the interaction of intramolecular excitations or excess electrons with autolocal breaking of the translational symmetry. These excitations are now known as Davydov solitons. In 1979, Davydov published the first textbook on

quantum biology Quantum biology is the study of applications of quantum mechanics and theoretical chemistry to aspects of biology that cannot be accurately described by the classical laws of physics. An understanding of fundamental quantum interactions is importan ...

entitled "Biology and Quantum Mechanics" in Russian, which was then translated in English three years later.

Biography

Alexander Davydov was born in

Yevpatoria Yevpatoria (; ; ; ) is a city in western Crimea, north of Kalamita Bay. Yevpatoria serves as the administrative center of Yevpatoria Municipality, one of the districts (''raions'') into which Crimea is divided. It had a population of His ...

in 1912 in a working class family. After graduating from high school in 1930, he moved to Moscow to work as a grinder at an automobile plant. In 1933, he joined the physics department at the

, obtaining his diploma in 1939, five years later. He then joined the graduate school, working with

Igor Tamm Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (; 8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet Union, Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, for their 1934 discovery and demon ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, he worked at an aircraft facility in Ufa. From 1945 to 1953, he worked at the NASU Institute of Physics.

Publications

* ''Theory of Absorption of Light by Molecular Crystals'',

Naukova Dumka Naukova Dumka ( — literally "scientific thought") is a publishing house in Kyiv, Ukraine. It was established by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1922, largely owing to the efforts of Ahatanhel Krymsky, a prominent Ukrainian ling ...

, Kiev (1951) * ''Theory of Atomic Nuclei'', Nauka, Moscow (1958) * ''Theory of Molecular Excitons'',

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American education science company that provides educational content, software, and services for students and educators across various levels—from K-12 to higher education and professional settings. They produce textbooks, ...

, New York (1962) * ''Quantum Mechanics'',

Pergamon Press Pergamon Press was an Oxford-based publishing house, founded by Paul Rosbaud and Robert Maxwell, that published scientific and medical books and journals. Originally called Butterworth-Springer, it is now an imprint of Elsevier. History The c ...

(1965) * ''Theory of Molecular Excitons'',

Plenum Press Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

, New York (1971) * ''Theory of Solids'', Nauka, Moscow (1980) * ''Biology and Quantum Mechanics'',

(1982) * ''Solitons in Molecular Systems'', D. Reidel (1985) * ''Solitons in Bioenergetics'',

, Kiev (1986) *
The Theoretical Investigation of High-Temperature Superconductivity
', Physics Reports, vol. 190, no. 4–5, pp. 191–306 (1990) * ''High-Temperature Superconducitvity'',

, Kiev (1990).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davydov, Alexander 1912 births 1993 deaths People from Yevpatoria People from Yevpatoriysky Uyezd 20th-century Ukrainian physicists Quantum biology Members of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Heroes of Socialist Labour Recipients of the Order of Lenin Burials at Baikove Cemetery Soviet physicists

Biography

Publications

See also

References