Russian physicist
Valery Leonidovich Pokrovsky
(
Russian
:
Валерий Леонидович Покровский
; born 1 January 1931) is a
Soviet
and Russian
physicist
. He is a member of the
Landau Institute
in
Chernogolovka
near
Moscow
in
Russia
and a Distinguished Professor of
Theoretical Physics
and holder of the William R. Thurman ’58 Chair in Physics at
Texas A&M University
.
[1]
He has twice received the
Landau Prize
of the
Soviet Academy of Science
, in 1984 and in 2018.
Early life and education
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Valery Leonidovich Pokrovsky was born on 1 January 1931 to Leonid Pokrovsky and Raisa Razumovsky in the former Soviet Union, growing up during the
Stalinist era
and
World War II
. In 1948, he became a student of the Department of Physics and Mathematics of Kharkov University. Despite a politically-motivated attempt to expel him, Pokrovsky completed his
master's degree
, graduating from
Kharkov University
,
Ukrainian SSR
,
USSR
in May 1953.
[2]
Pokrovsky and his wife, Svetlana Krylova, were then sent to
Novosibirsk
, where Pokrovsky became a student of an exiled scientist,
Yuri Borisovich Rumer
. For his Ph.D. work, Pokrovsky developed a type of polynomial and extended
Charles L. Dolph
's theory of optimal linear arrays. Valery Pokrovsky defended his PhD thesis at
Tomsk University
in 1957.
[2]
Career
[
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In 1955, Yuri Rumer's rights of citizenship were restored and he began to build up his research group. In 1957, the
Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences
of the
USSR
was established. Rumer became Director of its Institute of Radiophysics and Pokrovsky became an academy scientist, where he remained until 1966.
[2]
In 1966, Pokrovsky was invited to join the newly founded
Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics
in Chernogolovka. He also worked with researchers at
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
. In 1990, he spent a six-month sabbatical with
Heiner Muller-Krumbhaar
at the Condensed Matter Division of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in
Julich
,
Germany
. In 1992, Pokrovsky became a professor of physics at
Texas A&M University
in the United States, while remaining a Senior Scientist at the Landau Institute.
[2]
Research
[
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]
His areas of research are
quantum mechanics
,
statistical physics
, and
condensed matter
theory. He is best known for his pioneering and fundamental contributions to the modern theory of
phase transitions
, together with
Alexander Patashinski
, in 1965, as well as the analysis of transformations between
commensurate and incommensurate
superstructures in
two-dimensional
systems, the
Pokrovsky-Talapov transition
.
Awards
[
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]
Valery Pokrovsky received several awards, including twice receiving the
Landau Prize
of the
Soviet Academy of Science
:first in 1984 with
Alexander Patashinski
for work on
phase transition
theory and second in 2018 “for fundamental contribution to statistical physics and quantum mechanics.”
[1]
He became a Fellow of the
American Physical Society
in 1999, and received the
Humboldt Prize
in 2000.
[1]
[3]
He was awarded the
Lars Onsager Prize
of the
American Physical Society
in 2005 "For fundamental and original contributions to statistical physics, including development of the scaling theory for correlation functions near critical points and of theories for commensurate-incommensurate phase transitions."
[4]
Selected publications
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]
References
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