Vsevolod Konstantinovich Frederiks (or Fréedericksz; ; April 29, 1885,

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

– January 6, 1944, Gorkiy) was a

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Soviet 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 ...

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 ...

. 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 can flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a common direction as i ...

. 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 French theologian John Calvin as a theological seminary. It remained focused on theology unti ...

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 anti-fascist ...

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

Göttingen University Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

. 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 and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental idea ...

. 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 (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

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 publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press 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 Russian scientists {{Russia-physicist-stub