Physicist / Astronomer Stamps

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• Ioffe Abram Fiodorovich

Born on 29.10.1880.
Died on 14.10.1960.

Ioffe, a Russian physicist, founded and headed for many years one of the major physical schools of the former USSR. Having graduated from St Petersburg Technological Institute in 1902, Ioffe gained experience in the famous W. Roentgen laboratory at Munich in Germany and in 1906 returned to St. Petersburg to continue his research activity at the Polytechnical Institute. The leading representatives of this school formed the core of the State Institute for Roentgenology and Radiology, one of the first research centers of Russia, established by Ioffe in 1918.

More than 20 institutes have originated from the Physico-Technical Institute. In 1919 Ioffe established in the Polytechnical Institute a Physico-Mechanical Department for teaching students not only pure but applied physics too.

The main scientific achievements of Ioffe relate to crystal physics (electric, photoelectric and mechanic properties) and X-ray structural analysis. Abram Ioffe nominated Igor Kurchatov as the leader of nuclear research. He was Corresponding Member of the Division of Physical-Mathematical Sciences since 30.11.1918. Academician of the Division of Physical-Mathematical Sciences since 08.05.1920.
Vice President since 08.05.1942 to 17.07.1945. As early as 1929 when very little was known about semiconductors, Ioffe showed that a thermoelectric generator utilising semiconductors could achieve a conversion efficiency of 4%, with further possible improvement in its performance. By the 1950's, Ioffe and his colleagues had developed the theory of thermoelectric conversion, which forms the basis of all modern thermoelectric theory.