Petr Ivanovich Lukirskii

Born Dec. 1 (13), 1894, in Orenburg; died Nov. 16, 1954, in Leningrad. Soviet physicist; one of the founders of emission electronics. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946; corresponding member, 1933).

Lukirskii graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1916. In 1918 he began working at the Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute. In 1919 he began teaching at Leningrad University (he became a professor in 1928). He became a professor at Leningrad Polytechnic Institute in 1945. In 1943 he became the director of the division of physics of the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Together with N. N. Semenov, Lukirskii was the first clearly to prove the appearance of secondary electrons upon scattering of electrons by the surface of a metal (1923). He studied soft X rays in the region of 10-100 angstroms. He was the first to detect the polarization of X rays during Compton scattering. He proposed the spherical condenser method, which became widely used, to analyze the distribution of electrons with respect to velocity. In 1928, together with S. S. Prilezhaev, Lukirskii studied the normal photoelectric effect, thus making possible highly precise verification of Einstein’s formula for the photoelectric effect and the measurement of Planck’s constant. In 1947, together with M. G. Meshcheriakov and T. I. Khrenina, he discovered a new type of nuclear reaction. He trained a school of specialists in electronics and in X-ray and nuclear physics (A. I. Alikhanov, A. I Alikhanian, L. A. Artsimovich, and B. P. Konstantinov). Lukirskii was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.