Igor Tamm

Igor Tamm
Igor Tamm, 1958
Born	Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm 8 July 1895 Vladivostok, Russian Empire
Died	12 April 1971 (aged 75) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet Union
Fields	Particle physics
Institutions	Second Moscow State University Moscow State University Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Lebedev Physical Institute
Alma mater	Moscow State University Edinburgh University
Doctoral students	Vitaly Ginzburg Andrey Sakharov Semen Shubin Evgeny Feinberg Leonid Keldysh Leonid Brekhovskikh Anatoly Vlasov
Known for	Tamm states Neutron magnetic moment Cherenkov–Vavilov effect Frank–Tamm formula Tamm–Dancoff approximation Hydrogen bomb Tokamak Phonon
Notable awards	1967 Lomonosov Gold Medal 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics 1954 Order of the Hero of Socialist Labour · Stalin Prize

Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (Russian: И́горь Евге́ньевич Тамм ; IPA: [ˈiɡərʲ jɪvˈɡʲenʲjɪvitɕ ˈtam]; 8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, for their 1934 discovery of Cherenkov radiation.

Biography

Tamm on the 2000 Russian stamp "Idea of phonons, 1929"

According to Russian sources, Tamm had German noble descent on his father's side. His grandfather Theodor Tamm emigrated from Thuringia,^[1] and other sources describe him as Jewish.^[2] He studied at a gymnasium in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad, Ukraine). In 1913–1914 he studied at the University of Edinburgh together with his school-friend Boris Hessen.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he joined the army as a volunteer field medic. In 1917 he joined the Revolutionary movement and became an active anti-War campaigner, serving on revolutionary committees after the March Revolution.^[3] He returned to the Moscow State University from which he graduated in 1918.

Tamm married Nataliya Shuyskaya in September 1917. They eventually had two children, Irina (1921–2009, chemist) and Evgeny (1926–2008, experimental physicist and famous mountain climber, leader of the Soviet Everest expedition in 1982^[4]).

On 1 May 1923, Tamm began teaching physics at the Second Moscow State University. The same year, he finished his first scientific paper, Electrodynamics of the Anisotropic Medium in the Special Theory of Relativity.^[5] In 1928, he spent a few months with Paul Ehrenfest at the University of Leiden. From 1934 until his death in 1971 Tamm was the head of the theoretical department at Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow.

In 1932, Tamm published a paper with his proposal of the concept of surface states. This concept is important for MOSFET physics.

In 1934, Tamm and Semen Altshuller suggested that neutron has a non-zero magnetic moment,^[6][7] the idea was met with scepticism at that time, as the neutron was supposed to be an elementary particle with zero charge, and thus could not have a magnetic moment. The same year, Tamm coined an idea that proton-neutron interactions can be described as an exchange force transmitted by a yet unknown massive particle,^[8][9] this idea was later developed by Hideki Yukawa into a theory of meson forces.

In 1945 he developed an approximation method for many-body physics. As Sidney Dancoff developed it independently in 1950, it is now called the Tamm-Dancoff approximation.

He was the Nobel Laureate in Physics for the year 1958 together with Pavel Cherenkov and Ilya Frank for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov-Vavilov effect.

In late 1940s-early 1950s Tamm was involved in the Soviet thermonuclear bomb project, in 1949–1953 he spent most of his time in the "secret city" of Sarov, working as a head of the theoretical group developing the hydrogen bomb,^[10] however he retired from the project and returned to the Moscow Lebedev Physical Institute after the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb in 1953.

In 1951, together with Andrei Sakharov, Tamm proposed a tokamak system for the realization of CTF on the basis of toroidal magnetic thermonuclear reactor and soon after the first such devices were built by the INF. Results from the T-3 Soviet magnetic confinement device in 1968, when the plasma parameters unique for that time were obtained, showed temperatures in their machine to be over an order of magnitude higher than what was expected by the rest of the community. The western scientists visited the experiment and verified the high temperatures and confinement, sparking a wave of optimism for the prospects of the tokamak as well as construction of new experiments, which is still the dominant magnetic confinement device today.

Tamm was a student of Leonid Isaakovich Mandelshtam in science and life.

On Tamm's religious views, he was an atheist.^[11][12]

Tamm died in Moscow, Soviet Union, now Russia. The Lunar crater Tamm is named after him.

References

1. Chernenko, Gennady (19 October 2004). "Igor Tamm". biographical encyclopedia peoples.ru. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
2. • Sklare, Marshall (1982). Understanding American Jewry. Transaction Publishers. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-87855-454-6.
   • Comay, Joan and Cohn-Sherbok, Lavinia (2002). Who's who in Jewish history: after the period of the Old Testament. Routledge. p. 362. ISBN 978-0-415-26030-5.
   • Schlessinger, Bernard S. and Schlessinger, June H. (1996). The who's who of Nobel Prize winners, 1901–1995. Oryx Press. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-89774-899-5. Parents: Father, Evgen Tamm; Mother, Olga Davidova Tamm. Nationality: Russian. Religion: Jewish.
   • James, Ioan Mackenzie (2009). Driven to innovate: a century of Jewish mathematicians and physicists. Peter Lang. p. 262. ISBN 978-1-906165-22-2.
   • Van Huyssteen, Wentzel (2003). Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, Volume 2. MacMillan Reference USA. p. 493.
3. Игорь Тамм. Hipersona.ru. Retrieved on 14 July 2014.
4. Mountaineering, climbing. January – February 2008 news. Russianclimb.com. Retrieved on 14 July 2014.
5. Feinberg, E. L. (1987) Reminiscences about I. E. Tamm. Nauka
6. Tamm, I.E. and Alshuler, S.A. "Magnetic moment of a neutron", Reports of the Academy of Science USSR, 1, 8, 455 (1934) (in Russian)
7. Tamm, I. (1934). "Nuclear Magnetic Moments and the Properties of the Neutron". Nature 134 (3384): 380. doi:10.1038/134380b0.
8. Tamm, I. G. (1934). "Exchange Forces between Neutrons and Protons, and Fermi's Theory". Nature 133 (3374): 981. doi:10.1038/133981a0.
9. Tamm, I. (1934). "Interaction of Neutrons and Protons". Nature 134 (3400): 1010. doi:10.1038/1341010c0.
10. Sakharov, Andrei (1990) Memoirs. Hutchinson. ISBN 0091746361
11. Ginzburg, V. L. (2005). About Science, Myself and Others. CRC Press. p. 253. ISBN 9780750309929. Nowadays, when we are facing manifestations of religious and. more often, pseudoreligious feelings, it is appropriate to mention that Igor Evgenevich was a convinced and unreserved atheist.
12. Feinberg, E. L. and Leonidov, A. V. (2011). Physicists: Epoch and Personalities (2 ed.). World Scientific. p. 86. ISBN 9789812834164.

Further reading

• L. I. Mandelshtam, 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).