Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz
(russian: Евге́ний Миха́йлович Ли́фшиц; February 21, 1915,
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine. ,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the 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 the Great Northern War ...
– October 29, 1985,
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
,
Russian SFSR
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
) was a leading
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 cau ...
and brother of the physicist
Ilya Lifshitz.
Work
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. Fr ...
,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the 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 the Great Northern War ...
(now
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and 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 inva ...
). Lifshitz is well known in the field of
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
for coauthoring the
BKL conjecture
A Belinski–Khalatnikov–Lifshitz (BKL) singularity is a model of the dynamic evolution of the universe near the initial gravitational singularity, described by an anisotropic, chaotic solution of the Einstein field equation of gravitatio ...
concerning the nature of a ''generic curvature singularity''. , this is widely regarded as one of the most important open problems in the subject of classical gravitation.
With
Lev Landau
Lev Davidovich Landau (russian: Лев Дави́дович Ланда́у; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet-Azerbaijani physicist of Jewish descent who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.
His ac ...
, Lifshitz co-authored ''
Course of Theoretical Physics
The ''Course of Theoretical Physics'' is a ten-volume series of books covering theoretical physics that was initiated by Lev Landau and written in collaboration with his student Evgeny Lifshitz starting in the late 1930s.
It is said that Land ...
'', an ambitious series of physics textbooks, in which the two aimed to provide a graduate-level introduction to the entire field of physics. These books are still considered invaluable and continue to be widely used.
Lifshitz was the second of only 43 people ever to pass Landau's "Theoretical Minimum" examination. He made many invaluable contributions, in particular to quantum electrodynamics, where he calculated the
Casimir force
In quantum field theory, the Casimir effect is a physical force acting on the macroscopic boundaries of a confined space which arises from the quantum fluctuations of the field. It is named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir, who pre ...
in an arbitrary macroscopic configuration of metals and dielectrics.
A special
multicritical point
Multicritical points are special points in the parameter space of thermodynamic or
other systems with a continuous phase transition. At least two thermodynamic or other
parameters must be adjusted to reach a multicritical point. At a multicritic ...
, the ''Lifshitz point'', carries, since 1975, his name.
Bibliography
* The paper introducing the
BKL conjecture
A Belinski–Khalatnikov–Lifshitz (BKL) singularity is a model of the dynamic evolution of the universe near the initial gravitational singularity, described by an anisotropic, chaotic solution of the Einstein field equation of gravitatio ...
.
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See also
*
Landau–Lifshitz model
*
Landau–Lifshitz–Gilbert equation
*
Landau–Lifshitz pseudotensor
*
Landau–Lifshitz aeroacoustic equation
*
Belinski–Khalatnikov–Lifshitz singularity
*
Lifshitz theory of van der Waals force In condensed matter physics and physical chemistry, the Lifshitz theory of van der Waals forces, sometimes called the macroscopic theory of van der Waals forces, is a method proposed by Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz in 1954 for treating van der Waal ...
*
Ferromagnetic resonance
*
Premelting
References
External links
*
For more information about Evgeny Lifshitz’s work, you can read ‘A Brief History of Time’ and ‘Brief Answers to the Big Questions’, both by the acclaimed author and scientist Stephen Hawking.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lifshitz, Evgeny Mikhailovich
1915 births
1985 deaths
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Jewish physicists
Lenin Prize winners
Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology faculty
Soviet Jews
Soviet physicists
Stalin Prize winners
Fluid dynamicists