Product Code Database
Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich (, ; 8 March 1914 – 2 December 1987), also known as YaB, was a leading Soviet people Physics of Belarusians, who is known for his prolific contributions in physical cosmology, physics of Plasma physics, combustion, and Fluid dynamics phenomena. (2026). 9780486420028, Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486420028
From 1943, Zeldovich, a self-taught physicist, started his career by playing a crucial role in the development of the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons. In 1963, he returned to academia to embark on pioneering contributions on the fundamental understanding of the thermodynamics of and expanding the scope of physical cosmology.
His father, Boris Naumovich Zeldovich, was a lawyer; his mother, Anna Petrovna Zeldovich (née Kiveliovich), a translator from French to Russian, was a member of the Writer's Union. Despite being born into a devoted and religious Jewish family, Zeldovich was an "absolute Atheism". (1991). 9782863320969, Atlantica Séguier Frontières. ISBN 9782863320969
Zeldovich was an Autodidacticism. He was regarded as having a remarkably versatile intellect, and during his life he explored and made major contributions to a wide range of scientific endeavors. From a given opportunity in May 1931, he secured an appointment as a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, and remained associated with the institute for the remainder of his life. As a laboratory assistant, he received preliminary instructions on the topics involved in the physical chemistry and built up his reputation among his seniors at the Institute of Chemical Physics.
From 1932 to 1934, Zeldovich attended the undergraduate courses on physics and mathematics at the Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University), and later attended the technical lectures on introductory physics at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (now Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University). (1997). 9781600864261, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.. ISBN 9781600864261
In 1936, he was successful in his candidacy for the Candidate of Science degree (a Soviet equivalent of PhD), having successfully defended his dissertation on the topic of the "adsorption and catalysis on heterogeneous surfaces". The centrality of his thesis focused towards the research on the Freundlich (or classical) adsorption isotherm, and Zeldovich discovered the theoretical foundation of this empirical observation.
In 1939, Zeldovich prepared his dissertation based on the mathematical theory of the physical interpretation of Nitrogen oxide, and successfully received the Doctor of Sciences in mathematical physics when it was reviewed by Alexander Frumkin. Zeldovich discovered its mechanism, known in physical chemistry as the thermal mechanism or Zeldovich mechanism.
In May 1941, Zeldovich worked with Khariton in constructing a theory, on the kinetics of nuclear reactions in the presence of the Critical mass. The work of Khariton and Zeldovich was extended into theories of ignition, combustion and detonation; these accounted for features which had not previously been correctly predicted, observed, nor explained. The modern theory of detonation accordingly is called the Zeldovich-von Neumann-Dohring, or ZND, theory, and its development involved tedious fast neutron calculations; this work had been delayed, due to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which obstructed progress on findings that in June 1941 would be de-classified. In 1942, Zeldovich was relocated to Kazan, and tasked by the People's Commissariat of Munitions to carry out work on conventional Gunpowder to be supplied to the Soviet Army, while Khariton was asked to design the new types of conventional weaponry.
In 1943, Joseph Stalin decided to launch an arms build-up of nuclear weapons, under the charge of Igor Kurchatov; the latter requested Stalin to relocate Zeldovich and Khariton to Moscow, in the nuclear weapons program. Zeldovich joined Igor Kurchatov's small team at this secretive laboratory in Moscow to launch the work on the nuclear combustion theory, and became a head of the theoretical department at the Arzamas-16 in 1946.
With , Isaak Pomeranchuk, and Khariton, Zeldovich prepared a scientific report on the feasibility of releasing energy through nuclear fusion triggered by an atomic explosion, and presented it to Igor Kurchatov. Zeldovich had benefitted from physical and technical knowledge provided by German physicist Klaus Fuchs and American physicist Theodore Hall, who each had worked on the American Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons.
In 1949, Zeldovich led a team of physicists that conducted the first nuclear test, the RDS-1, based roughly on the Fat Man obtained through the atomic spies in the United States, though he continued his fundamental work on explosive theory. Zeldovich then began working on modernizing the successive designs of the nuclear weapon and initially conceived the idea of hydrogen bomb to Andrei Sakharov and others. In the course of his work on nuclear weapons, Zeldovich did ground-breaking work in radiation hydrodynamics, and the physics of matter at high pressure.
Between 1950 and 1953, Zeldovich performed calculations necessary for the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb that were verified by Andrei Sakharov, although the two groups worked in parallel on the development of the thermonuclear fusion. However, it was Sakharov that radically changed the approach to thermonuclear fusion, aided by Vitaly Ginzburg in 1952. (1998). 9781349262908, Springer. ISBN 9781349262908 He remained associated with the nuclear testing program, while heading the experimental laboratories at Arzamas-16 until October 1963, when he left for academia.
In October 1973, at the height of the Yom Kippur War, and having heard rumors of an impending Soviet nuclear strike on Israel, left a letter with fellow Soviet Jewish physicist Ilya Lifshitz in the event of a strike, in which case he intended to commit suicide.
In early 1960s, Zeldovich started working in astrophysics and physical cosmology. In 1964, he and independently Edwin Salpeter were the first to suggest that around massive are responsible for the huge amounts of energy radiated by quasars. From 1965, he was a professor at the Department of Physics of the Moscow State University and a head of the division of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute. In 1966, he and Igor Novikov were the first to propose searching for black hole candidates among binary systems in which one star is optically bright and X-ray dark and the other optically dark but X-ray bright (the black hole candidate).
Zeldovich worked on the theory of the evolution of the hot universe, the properties of the microwave background radiation, the large-scale structure of the universe, and the theory of . He predicted, with Rashid Sunyaev, that the cosmic microwave background should undergo inverse Compton scattering. This is called the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, and measurements by telescopes such as the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope has established it as one of the key observational probes of cluster cosmology. Zeldovich contributed sharp insights into the nature of the large scale structure of the universe, in particular, through the use of Lagrangian perturbation theory (the Zeldovich approximation) and the application of the Burgers' equation approach via the adhesion approximation.
In 1974, in collaboration with A. G. Polnarev, suggested the existence of a gravitational memory effect, for which a system of freely falling particles initially at relative rest are displaced after the passing of a burst of gravitational radiation.Ya. B. Zel’dovich and A. G. Polnarev, "Radiation of gravitational waves by a cluster of superdense stars," Astron. Zh. 51, 30 (1974) Sov..
Zeldovich also had a daughter, Annushka, with O.K. Shiryaeva.
He had one more daughter in 1945, Alexandra Varkovitskaya, with a linguist and folklorist Ludmila Varkovitskaya.
Zeldovich had another son with Nina Nikolaevna Agapova in 1958, whose name was Leonid Yakovlevich Agapov; he died in 2016 at the age of 58.
|
|
