Yakov Frenkel
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__NOTOC__ Yakov Il'ich Frenkel (; 10 February 1894 – 23 January 1952) was a
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 renowned for his works in the field of condensed-matter physics. He is also known as Jacob Frenkel, frequently using the name J. Frenkel in publications in English.


Early years

He was born to a
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
family in Rostov on Don, in the
Don Host Oblast Don Host Oblast was a province (''oblast'') of the Russian Empire which consisted of the territory of the Don Cossacks, coinciding approximately with present-day Rostov Oblast in Russia. Its administrative center was Cherkassk, and later Nov ...
of the
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on 10 February 1894. His father was involved in revolutionary activities and spent some time in internal exile to Siberia; after the danger of pogroms started looming in 1905, the family spent some time in Switzerland, where Yakov Frenkel began his education. In 1912, while studying in the Karl May Gymnasium in St. Petersburg, he completed his first physics work on the
Earth's magnetic field Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from structure of Earth, Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from ...
and atmospheric electricity. This work attracted
Abram Ioffe Abram Fedorovich Ioffe ( rus, Абра́м Фёдорович Ио́ффе, p=ɐˈbram ˈfʲɵdərəvʲɪtɕ ɪˈofɛ; – 14 October 1960) was a prominent Soviet Union, Soviet physicist. He received the USSR State Prize, Stalin Prize (1942), the ...
's attention and later led to collaboration with him. He considered moving to the USA (which he visited in the summer of 1913, supported by money hard-earned by tutoring) but was nevertheless admitted to St. Petersburg University in the winter semester of 1913, at which point any emigration plans ended. Frenkel graduated from the university in three years and remained there to prepare for a professorship (his oral exam for the master's degree was delayed due to the events of the October revolution). His first scientific paper came to light in 1917.


Early scientific career

In the last years of the Great War and until 1921 Frenkel was involved (along with Igor Tamm) in the foundation of the University in Crimea (his family moved to Crimea due to the deteriorating health of his mother). From 1921 till the end of his life, Frenkel worked at the Physico-Technical Institute. Beginning in 1922, Frenkel published a book virtually every year. In 1924, he published 16 papers (of which 5 were basically German translations of his other publications in Russian), three books, and edited multiple translations. He was the author of the first theoretical course 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 ...
. For his distinguished scientific service, he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1929. He married Sara Isakovna Gordin in 1920. They had two sons, Sergei and Viktor (Victor). He served as a visiting professor at the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...
in the
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for a short period of time around 1930. Early works of Yakov Frenkel focused on electrodynamics, statistical mechanics and relativity, though he soon switched to the quantum theory. Paul Ehrenfest, whom he met at a conference in Leningrad, encouraged him to go abroad for collaborations which he did in 1925–1926, mainly in
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and
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, and met with
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...
in Berlin. It was during this period when Schrödinger published his groundbeaking papers on wave mechanics; Heisenberg's had appeared shortly before. Frenkel enthusiastically entered the field through discussions (he reportedly discovered what is now called the Klein–Gordon equation simultaneously with
Oskar Klein Oskar Benjamin Klein (; 15 September 1894 – 5 February 1977) was a Swedish theoretical physics, theoretical physicist. Oskar Klein is known for his work on Kaluza–Klein theory, which is partially named after him. Biography Klein was born ...
) but his first scientific paper on the matter (considering electrodynamics in metals) was published in 1927. In 1927–1930, he discovered the reason for the existence of domains in ferromagnetics; worked on the theory of resonance broadening and collision broadening of the spectral lines; developed a theory of electric resistance on the boundary of two metals and of a metal and a semiconductor.


Celebrated discoveries

In conducting research on the molecular theory of the condensed state (1926), he introduced the notion of the
hole A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid Body (physics), body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in m ...
in a crystal, three years before Paul Dirac introduced his eponymous sea. The
Frenkel defect In crystallography, a Frenkel defect is a type of point defect in crystalline solids, named after its discoverer Yakov Frenkel. The defect forms when an atom or smaller ion (usually cation) leaves its place in the structure, creating a vacan ...
became firmly established in the physics of solids and liquids. In the 1930s, his research was supplemented with works on the theory of plastic deformation. His theory, now known as the Frenkel–Kontorova model, is important in the study of dislocations. Tatyana Kontorova was then a PhD candidate working with Frenkel. In 1930 to 1931, Frenkel showed that ''neutral excitation'' of a
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 ...
by light is possible, with an
electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...
remaining bound to a hole created at a lattice site identified as a quasiparticle, the exciton. Mention should be made of Frenkel's works on the theory of
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s,
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(the liquid drop model of the nucleus, in 1936), and
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...
s. In 1930, his son Viktor Frenkel was born. Viktor became a prominent historian of science, writing a number of biographies of prominent physicists including an enlarged version of ''Yakov Ilich Frenkel'', published in 1996. In 1934, Frenkel outlined the formalism for the multi-configuration self-consistent field method, later rediscovered and developed by Douglas Hartree. He contributed to semiconductor and insulator physics by proposing a theory, which is now commonly known as the Poole–Frenkel effect, in 1938. "Poole" refers to H. H. Poole (Horace Hewitt Poole, 1886–1962), Ireland. Poole reported experimental results on the conduction in insulators and found an empirical relationship between conductivity and electrical field. Frenkel later developed a microscopic model, similar to the Schottky effect, to explain Poole's results more accurately. In this paper published in USA, Frenkel only very briefly mentioned an empirical relationship as Poole's law. Frenkel cited Poole's paper when he wrote a longer article in a Soviet journal. During the 1930s, Frenkel and Ioffe opposed dangerous tendencies in Soviet physics, tying science to the materialist ideology, with remarkable courage. Soviet physics, as a result of these actions, never descended to the depths
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did. Still, he subsequently had to forgo publishing several papers, fearing that might have unfortunate consequences. Yakov Frenkel was involved in the studies of the liquid phase, too, since the mid-1930s (he undertook some research in colloids) and during the
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 ...
, when the institute was evacuated to
Kazan Kazan; , IPA: Help:IPA/Tatar, ɑzanis the largest city and capital city, capital of Tatarstan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka (river), Kazanka Rivers, covering an area of , with a population of over 1. ...
. The results of his more than twenty years of study of the theory of liquid state were generalized in the classic monograph "Kinetic theory of liquids".


Later years

During the wartime, he worked on contemporary practical problems to help his country in sustaining the harsh fight. After the war, Frenkel focussed on seismoelectrics, also proposing that sound waves in metals might affect electric phenomena. He subsequently worked mainly in the field of atmospheric effects, but did not abandon his other interests, publishing several papers in nuclear physics. Frenkel died in Leningrad in 1952. His son, Victor Frenkel, wrote a biography of his father, ''Yakov Ilich Frenkel: His work, life and letters''. This book, originally written in Russian, has also been translated and published in English.


See also

* Chandrasekhar limit * Poromechanics * Solid state ionics


References


English translations of books by Frenkel

*, 2nd edition ( Dover Publications, 1950), * *


Literature

*Victor Frenkel, Victor Yakovlevich Frenkel: ''Yakov Illich Frenkel. His work, life and letters''. (original: (ru)'' Яков Ильич Френкель'', translated by Alexander S. Silbergleit), Birkhäuser, Basel / Boston / Berlin 2001, (English).


Online


External links


Biography of Jacov Il'ich Frenkel
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Frenkel, Yakov 1894 births 1952 deaths Scientists from Rostov-on-Don People from Don Host Oblast Russian materials scientists Jewish Russian physicists Soviet Jewish physicists Soviet nuclear physicists Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Condensed matter physicists Russian scientists