Ilya Frank

Ilya Frank
Born	Ilya Mikhailovich Frank (1908-10-23)23 October 1908 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	22 June 1990(1990-06-22) (aged 81) Moscow, Soviet Union
Fields	Nuclear physics
Institutions	Moscow State University, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Doctoral advisor	Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov
Known for	Čerenkov radiation
Notable awards	Stalin Prize 1946, Nobel Prize in Physics (1958)

Ilya Mikhailovich Frank (Russian: Илья́ Миха́йлович Франк) (23 October 1908 – 22 June 1990) was a Soviet winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1958 jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Igor Y. Tamm, also of the Soviet Union. He received the award for his work in explaining the phenomenon of Cherenkov radiation. He received the Stalin prize in 1946 and 1953 and the USSR state prize in 1971.

Ilya Frank was born on 23 October 1908 in St. Petersburg. His father, , was a talented mathematician descended from a Jewish family, while his mother Yelizaveta Mikhailovna Gratsianova, was a Russian Orthodox physician. His father participated in the student revolutionary movement, and as a result was expelled from Moscow University. After the October Revolution, he was reinstated and appointed professor. Ilya's uncle, Semen Frank, a noted Russian philosopher, wasn't as fortunate and was expelled from the USSR in 1922 together with 160 other intellectuals. Ilya had one elder brother, Gleb Mikhailovich Frank, who became an eminent biophysicist and member of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R..

Ilya Frank studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Moscow State University. From his second year he worked in the laboratory of Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, whom he regarded as his mentor. After graduating in 1930, on recommendation of Vavilov, he started working at the State Optical Institute in Leningrad. There he wrote his first publication—about luminescence— with Vavilov. The work he did there would form the basis of his doctoral dissertation in 1935.

...
Wikipedia