Igor Tamm

Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (Russian И́горь Евге́ньевич Тамм; 8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, for their 1934 discovery of Cherenkov radiation. Tamm was born in Vladivostok, Russian Empire (now Russia), into "an old established Jewish family" (his grandfather emigrated from Thuringia). He studied at the grammar school in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad, Ukraine). In 1913-1914 he studied at the University of Edinburgh together with his gymnasium school friend Boris Hessen. He then moved to the Moscow State University from which graduated in 1918. On 1 May, 1923, Tamm began to teach physics at the Second Moscow State...