Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam or Mandelshtam ( rus, Леонид Исаакович Мандельштам, p=lʲɪɐˈnʲit ɨsɐˈakəvʲɪtɕ mənʲdʲɪlʲˈʂtam, a=Ru-Leonid_Mandelstam.ogg, links=y; 4 May 1879 – 27 November 1944) was a Soviet and Russian physicist.

Life

Leonid Mandelstam was born in

Mogilev Mogilev (; , ), also transliterated as Mahilyow (, ), is a city in eastern Belarus. It is located on the Dnieper, Dnieper River, about from the Belarus–Russia border, border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and from Bryansk Oblast. As of 2024, ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

(now

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

) into a Jewish family. He studied at the Novorossiya University in

Odesa Odesa, also spelled Odessa, is the third most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern ...

, but was expelled in 1899 due to political activities, and continued his studies at the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. Founded in the 16th century by Johannes Sturm, it was a center of intellectual life during ...

. He remained in Strasbourg until 1914, and returned with the beginning of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1942. He died in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

, aged 65.

Scientific achievements

The main emphasis of his work was broadly considered theory of

oscillation Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples of oscillation include a swinging pendulum ...

s, which included

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes t ...

and

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical Scientific theory, theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. Reprinted, Addison-Wesley, 1989, It is ...

. He was a co-discoverer of inelastic ''combinational

scattering In physics, scattering is a wide range of physical processes where moving particles or radiation of some form, such as light or sound, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by localized non-uniformities (including particles and radiat ...

of light'' used now in

Raman spectroscopy Raman spectroscopy () (named after physicist C. V. Raman) is a Spectroscopy, spectroscopic technique typically used to determine vibrational modes of molecules, although rotational and other low-frequency modes of systems may also be observed. Ra ...

(see below). This paradigm-altering discovery (together with

Grigory Landsberg Grigory Samuilovich Landsberg (Russian: Григорий Самуилович Ландсберг; 22 January 1890 – 2 February 1957) was a Soviet physicist who worked in the fields of optics and spectroscopy. Together with Leonid Mandelstam h ...

) had occurred at the

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 ...

just one week earlier than a parallel discovery of the same phenomena by C. V. Raman and

K. S. Krishnan Sir Kariamanikkam Srinivasa Krishnan (4 December 1898 – 14 June 1961) was an Indian physicist. He was a co-discoverer of Raman scattering, for which his mentor C. V. Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics. Early life Kariama ...

. In Russian literature it is called ''"combinational scattering of light"'' (from combination of frequencies of photons and molecular vibrations) but in English it is named after Raman.

Discovery of the combinational scattering of light

In 1918, Mandelstam theoretically predicted the

fine structure In atomic physics, the fine structure describes the splitting of the spectral lines of atoms due to electron spin and relativistic corrections to the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation. It was first measured precisely for the hydrogen atom ...

splitting in

Rayleigh scattering Rayleigh scattering ( ) is the scattering or deflection of light, or other electromagnetic radiation, by particles with a size much smaller than the wavelength of the radiation. For light frequencies well below the resonance frequency of the scat ...

due to light scattering on thermal acoustic waves. Beginning from 1926, Mandelstam and Landsberg initiated experimental studies on vibrational scattering of light in

crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...

s at the Moscow State University. As a result of this research, Landsberg and Mandelstam discovered the effect of the combinational scattering of light on 21 February 1928. They presented this fundamental discovery for the first time at a colloquium on 27 April 1928. They published brief reports about this discovery (experimental results with some attempt at a theoretical explanation) in Russian and in German and then published a comprehensive paper in ''

Zeitschrift für Physik ''Zeitschrift für Physik'' (English: ''Journal for Physics'') is a defunct series of German peer-reviewed physics journals established in 1920 by Springer Berlin Heidelberg. The series ended publication in 1997, when it merged with other journal ...

''. In the same year, two Indian scientists C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan also observed the inelastic scattering of light. Raman stated that "The line spectrum of the new radiation was first seen on 28 February 1928". Thus, combinational scattering of light was observed by Mandelstam and Landsberg a week earlier than by Raman and Krishnan. However, according to the Physics Nobel Committee, Mandelstam and Landsberg were unable to provide an independent, complete interpretation for the discovery, as they only later cited Raman's article. Also, their observations were limited to crystals, whereas Raman and Krishnan showed the effect in solids, liquids, and vapors, thus proving the universal nature of the effect. Raman's method was further applied with great success in different fields of molecular physics, for example in the composition analysis of liquids, gases, and solids, and provided significant insight on nuclear spins. Hence, the light-scattering phenomenon became known as

Raman scattering In chemistry and physics, Raman scattering or the Raman effect () is the inelastic scattering of photons by matter, meaning that there is both an exchange of energy and a change in the light's direction. Typically this effect involves vibrationa ...

or the Raman effect. Mandelstam's lectures in optics dated by 1944 can be considered as the formal beginning of the second stage of the DNG-

metamaterial A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά ''meta'', meaning "beyond" or "after", and the Latin word ''materia'', meaning "matter" or "material") is a type of material engineered to have a property, typically rarely observed in naturally occu ...

s theory.Slyusar V.I. Metamaterials on antenna solutions.// 7th International Conference on Antenna Theory and Techniques ICATT'09, Lviv, Ukraine, October 6–9, 2009. - Pp. 20

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Scientific school and legacy

Mandelstam founded one of the two major schools of theoretical physics in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

(another being due to

Lev Landau Lev Davidovich Landau (; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. He was considered as one of the last scientists who were universally well-versed and ma ...

). In particular, he was mentor to

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 ...

, a

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

laureate who in turn was a mentor to

Vitaly Ginzburg Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg ForMemRS (; – 8 November 2009) was a Russian physicist who was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003, together with Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett for their "pioneering contributions to the theory ...

who also received a Nobel Prize in Physics and

Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet Physics, physicist and a List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world. Alt ...

, the "father of Soviet hydrogen bomb" and a

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...

laureate. A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after Mandelstam.

Selected publications

* L. I. Mandelstam, I. E. Tamm
The uncertainty relation between energy and time in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics
, Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR (ser. fiz.) 9, 122–128 (1945). English translation: J. Phys. (USSR) 9, 249–254 (1945).

References

External links

* * Y.L. Alpert
''Tribute to the Scientific School of L.I. Mandelshtam''
* Sergei I. Vavilov
''Obituary to academician L.I. Mandelstam'', 1945
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mandelshtam, Leonid Isaakovich 1879 births 1944 deaths People from Mogilev Academic staff of the University of Strasbourg Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Moscow State University alumni Academic staff of Moscow State University University of Strasbourg alumni Recipients of the Order of Lenin Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Recipients of the Stalin Prize Recipients of the Lenin Prize Jews from the Russian Empire Optical physicists Belarusian Jews Belarusian physicists Jewish Russian physicists Russian physicists Soviet Jewish physicists Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery Russian scientists