Torichan Pavlovich Kravets

Born Mar. 10 (22), 1876, in the village of Volkovo, present-day Bogoroditsk Raion, Tula Oblast; died May 21, 1955, in Leningrad, Soviet physicist; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943).

Kravets graduated from Moscow University in 1898; since 1896 he had been conducting scientific work there under the direction of P. N. Lebedev. He taught at the Moscow Engineering School from 1898 to 1914. He became a professor at the University of Kharkov in 1913, at the Moscow Institute of Transportation in 1921, at the University of Irkutsk in 1923, and at Leningrad University in 1938. In 1926 he became head of the department of experimental physics of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (a position he held until 1932) and head of the photography laboratory of the S. I. Vavilov State Optics Institute.

Kravets did research on the theory of light absorption in solutions of colored substances for which he used an electron theory (1912). He studied the variations in the water level of the inland seas of the USSR (1923–26). Together with his students, he carried out a series of studies to clarify the nature of the photolytic coloring of silver halides and of latent photographic image centers. He was the author of works in the history of physics. Kravets was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1946), the Order of Lenin, and three additional orders, as well as medals.