Alexei Vasilievich Shubnikov (Russian: Алексей Васильевич Шубников; 29March 1887 – 27April 1970) was a Soviet crystallographer and mathematician. Shubnikov was the founding director of the Institute of Crystallography (named after him following his death) of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Moscow. Shubnikov pioneered Russian crystallography and its application.[1]
Life
Career
In 1912 Shubnikov graduated from the Department of Natural Sciences of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. From 1920 to 1925 he was a professor at the Ural Mining Institute, Yekaterinburg. In 1925, at the invitation of the well-known mineralogist and geologist Alexander Fersman, he went to Leningrad, where he founded a laboratory of crystallography and laid the foundations of the Soviet school of theoretical and applied crystallography and related fields. From 1927 to 1929 he visited research institutions in Norway and Germany and worked temporarily with Friedrich Rinne. In 1934 he received a doctorate in the field of geological sciences. As part of a restructuring in the Academy of Sciences, he moved to Moscow with his laboratory in 1934. With the beginning of the German-Soviet war in 1941 it was transferred to the Sverdlovsk region, where research work on piezoelectricity continued. In 1943 he returned to Moscow with his laboratory, and in 1944 it was transformed into the Institute of Crystallography by a decision of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. In 1953 he founded the Department of Crystal Physics at the Physics Faculty of Lomonosov University and was a professor there until 1968. He served as director of the academy's Institute for Crystallography until 1962.[2]
Shubnikov was the author of more than 250 scientific publications. His main works are devoted to the theory of symmetry, the theory of crystal growth, and the physical properties of crystals. He was the first to draw attention to piezoelectric textures, which predicted the possibility of visual observation of atoms and molecules when monochromatic rays pass through two superimposed crystal rasters, which has found application in the technique of modern electron microscopy. Having developed the doctrine of antisymmetry, he deduced the 58 crystallographic point groups of antisymmetry (Shubnikov groups).[4] Selected works available in English:
On the works of Pierre Curie on Symmetry. In: Usp. fiz. Nauk. Vol. 59, 1956, pp. 591–602. (Original Russian, English version 1988)[5]
Antisymmetry of textures. In: Soviet Physics Crystall. Vol. 3, No. 3, 1958, pp. 269–273. (Original Russian, English version 1988)[6]
Symmetry of similarity. In: Soviet Physics Crystall. Vol. 5, No. 4, 1961, pp. 469–476. (Original Russian, English version 1988)[7]
Autobiographical Data and Personal Reminiscences, In: P.P. Ewald (Ed.): Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction, Conference Proc., 25–31 July 1962, Munich, Germany[8]
^Shubnikov, A.V.; Belov, N.V. (1964). Holser, William T. (ed.). Colored Symmetry. New York: Pergamon.
^Shubnikov, A.V.; Koptsik, V.A. (1974). Symmetry in science and art. New York: Plenum Press. ISBN9780306307591.
Further reading
Smolensky, G.A., Zhdanov, G.S. and Shuvalov, L.A.: "In memory of academician A.V. Shubnikov". In: Ferroelectrics. Volume 1, No. 1, 1970, pp. 191–193, doi:10.1080/00150197008241484 10.1080/00150197008241484. (Obituary, with photograph)
Belov, N.V. and Vainshtein, B.K.: "Obituary. Alexey Vasilyevich Shubnikov 1887–1970", Journal of Applied Crystallography 3, December 1970, pp. 551–552, doi:10.1107/S002188987000691X 10.1107/S002188987000691X (Obituary, with photograph)
Hargittai, I. and Vainshtein, B.K. (eds.): Crystal symmetries: Shubnikov Centennial papers (1988)
Shchagina, N.M.: "Aleksei Vasilievich Shubnikov: Memories of the Man and his Scientific Achievements on the 125th Anniversary of his Birth (2012)". In: Ferroelectrics. Volume 437, No. 1, pp. 1–7
