Ilya Frank

Who was Ilya Frank?

Ilya Mikhailovich Frank (Russian: Илья Михайлович Франк; 23 October 1908 – 22 June 1990) was a Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Cherenkov and Igor Tamm, also of the Soviet Union. Ilya Frank was born in St. Petersburg. His father, Mikhail Lyudvigovich Frank, was a talented mathematician descended from a Jewish family, while his mother, Yelizaveta Mikhailovna Gratsianova, was a Russian Orthodox physician. His father participated in the student revolutionary movement, and as a result was expelled from Moscow University. Ilya had one elder brother, Gleb Mikhailovich Frank, who became an eminent biophysicist and member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Ilya Frank studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Moscow State University. He received the Stalin prize in 1946 and 1953 and the USSR state prize in 1971.

After the October Revolution, he was reinstated and appointed professor. Ilya's uncle, Semyon Frank, a philosopher, was expelled from Soviet Russia in 1922 together with 160 other intellectuals.

Historical significance

He received the award for his work in explaining the phenomenon of Cherenkov radiation.