Grigorii Samuilovich Landsberg

Born Jan. 10 (22), 1890, in Vologda; died Feb. 2, 1957, in Moscow. Soviet physicist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946; corresponding member, 1932).

Landsberg graduated from Moscow University in 1913 and taught there from 1913 to 1915, from 1923 to 1945, and from 1947 to 1951. He was appointed a professor in 1923. Between 1951 and 1957 he was a professor at the Moscow Physicotechni-cal Institute. Beginning in 1934 he worked at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Landsberg’s principal works were on optics and spectroscopy. In 1926 he first isolated and studied molecular scattering of light in crystals. In 1928, together with L. I. Mandel’shtam, he discovered the phenomenon of the combination (or Raman) scattering of light (simultaneously with C. Raman and K. S. Krishnan). He and Mandel’shtam also discovered the fine structure of the Rayleigh line, and in 1931, the phenomenon of selective scattering of light. Landsberg laid the basis in the Soviet Union for the spectroscopy of organic molecules and the study of intramolecular and intermolecular interactions in gases, liquids, and solids. He developed methods for the spectral analysis of metals and alloys (State Prize of the USSR, 1941) and of complex organic mixtures, including engine fuels.

Landsberg was the author of a well-known textbook on optics and the editor of the popular Elementary Textbook of Physics (vols. 1–3, 7th ed., 1971). He was the founder and chairman of the Commission on Spectroscopy. Landsberg created a school of atomic and molecular spectral analysis. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin and various medals.