Bentsion Moiseevich Vul

Born May 9 (22), 1903, in Belaia Tserkov’. Soviet physicist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939); Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Member of the CPSU since 1922.

Vul graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute in 1928. In 1932 he began working at the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and in 1933 he became head of the laboratory of the physics of dielectrics that he organized (now the laboratory of the physics of semiconductors). In 1951 he became a member of the chief editorial board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. His major works are devoted to the physics of dielectrics and semiconductors. Vul determined the nature of the edge effect during the breakdown of solid dielectrics and the special features of the breakdown of compressed gases in highly heterogeneous fields. He developed the basis of the theory of the filtration of aerosols (1937). In 1944 he discovered the new ferroelectric—barium titanate, BaTiO₃ (State Prize of the USSR, 1946)—which initiated numerous scientific studies and practical applications in the field of ferroelectrics. A number of works were devoted to the study of p-n junctions in semiconductors and to the foundations of the theory of semiconductor instruments. Vul guided the development of the first laboratory prototypes of semiconductor instruments in the USSR. He was the first to propose the use of p-n junctions as nonlinear capacitors, which have extensive applications in parametric amplifiers. In 1962, jointly with others, he developed the first semiconductor quantum generator in the USSR (Lenin Prize, 1964). Vul has been awarded four Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.