VI Congress of the Russian Association of Physicists as a "mirror" of Russian Science in the late 1920s
Valery M. Anikin, Dmitry V. Churochkin, Svetlana V. Churochkina
Saratov State University
Abstract
In August 1928, the VI Congress of the Russian Association of Physicists (RAPh) with a wide international representation was held in the USSR. Among the foreign guests invited by Academician Abram F. Ioffe were famous scientists from Germany, England, France, Holland, USA, Poland and Czechoslovakia: Anton E. van Arkel, Max Born, Leon Brillouin, Charles G. Darwin (grandson of Charles R. Darwin, the creator of the evolutionary theory), Peter J. V. Debye, Paul A. M. Dirac, Rudolf V. Ladenburg, Richard E. von Mises, Robert V. Pohl, Peter Prinsheim, Owen V. Richardson, Philip Frank, etc. Among the participants of the congress were 6 future Nobel Prize laureates: O. W. Richarson (1929 Prize for 2028), P. A. M. Dirac (1933), P. J. V. Debay (1936), M. Born (1954), N. N.Semenov (1956), L. D. Landau (1962).
The VI Congress of the RAPh was distinguished by an unusual (mobile) format: after holding plenary sessions at Moscow University, the congress, named in the foreign scientific press as Volga Congress, continued its work on a steamer sailing along the Volga from Nizhny Novgorod to Stalingrad, with stops and performances in university cities (Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov). The congress was attended by academicians A. F. Ioffe and P. P. Lazarev and had 10 scientific sections: molecular physics, optics, electromagnetism, X-rays, geophysics, biophysics, physics-chemical, theoretical physics, acoustics, technical physics.
In Saratov, Anton van Arkel, Max Born and Philippe Frank made presentations in a Large physical auditorium of Saratov University. The materials of the congress today can be considered as an objective cross-section of the achievements of physics in the late 1920s. Of the Russian participants of the congress (taking into account the students and postgraduates), about 30 people subsequently became academicians and corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences: N. N. Semenov, L. D. Landau, S. I. Vavilov, G. S. Landsberg, L.I. Mandelstam, A. A. Andronov, V. K. Arkadiev, B. A. Vvedensky, E. K. Zavoysky, I. K. Kikoin, V. N. Kondratiev, T. P. Kravets, G. V. Kurdyumov, M. A. Leontovich, P. I. Lukirsky, I. V. Obreimov, P. A. Rebinder, D. A. Rozhansky, A. N.Terenin, Ya. I.Frenkel, S.E. Frisch, A. N. Frumkin, V. V. Shuleikin, Yu. B. Khariton, etc.
The report analyzes: the history of the VI Congress of the Russian Association of Physicists in the general ten-year history of the RAPh, the paradigms of the activities and achievements of the RAPh, provides new data on the holding of the final meeting of the congress in Saratov on August 15, 1928.
Speaker
Valery M. Anikin
Saratov State University
Russia
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