Vladimir Gribov

Vladimir Naumovich Gribov (Russian Влади́мир Нау́мович Гри́бов; March 25, 1930, Leningrad – August 13, 1997, Budapest) was a prominent Russian theoretical physicist, who worked on high-energy physics, quantum field theory and the Regge theory of the strong interactions.

His best known contributions are the pomeron, the DGLAP equations, and the Gribov copies.

Gribov completed his studies at the university of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1952, but at first he could find no employment there because of his Jewish background, so he spent two years teaching at an evening institute. In 1954 he joined the Ioffe Institute in Leningrad (then called the Physical-Technical Institute, PTI), and soon became the de facto leader of the theoretical department.

in the late 1950s, he participated in Lev Landau's famous weekly seminars in Moscow, where he met Isaak Pomeranchuk, who he greatly admired and with whom he collaborated intensely. When the PTI theory department where Gribov worked, became a part of the Leningrad Institute for Nuclear Physics (LNPI) in 1971, Gribov became responsible for leading a seminar on quantum field theory and elementary particle physics. This seminar became famous both within the Soviet Union and internationally, because of its open-ended discussions, where prominent Russian scientists often voiced vigorous objections and debated points with the speaker and with one another. In these debates, each participant was treated equally regardless of position and reputation— the only thing that mattered was the physics. Foreign guests, no matter how prestigious, would often find themselves interrupted and corrected by Gribov in mid-lecture.

Although Gribov was most interested in elementary particle physics, he enjoyed discussing problems from all fields of physics and drew many inspirations from solid-state physics. One of the principles at his institute was that a theorist should never refuse to help an experimentalist.

Gribov was not an open dissident, but he had a reputation as an independent and critical thinker. So despite his international recognition, Gribov was not allowed to travel abroad for many decades.

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