Ivan Vasilevich Obreimov

Born Feb. 24 (Mar. 8), 1894, in Annécy, France. Soviet physicist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958; corresponding member, 1933).

Obreimov graduated from Petrograd University in 1915. From 1919 to 1924 and from 1942 to 1944 he worked at the State Optical Institute; from 1924 to 1929, at the Leningrad Physico-technical Institute; from 1929 to 1941, at the Ukrainian Physico-technical Institute, from 1944 to 1954, at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; and from 1954 to 1965 at the Institute of Hetero-organic Compounds of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Since 1965 he has worked at the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Obreimov’s main works deal with crystal physics and molecular spectroscopy. Together with L. V. Shubnikov, he developed a method of growing single crystals from a melt and studied their plastic strain and optical properties. He studied the spectra of organic crystals at low temperatures. He is the author of the monograph On the Use of Fresnel Diffraction for Physical and Technical Measurements (1945; State Prize of the USSR, 1946), in which he presented a theory and method he had developed for determining dispersion (the Obreimov method, which has found wide use). He has been awarded two orders, and also medals.