Vitaly Ginzburg

Born on 4 October 1916 in Moscow, Vitaly Ginzburg was a Nobel-winning physicist known for his contributions to superconductivity. After just four years of formal schooling, Ginzburg became an assistant in 1931 at an x-ray laboratory, where he developed an interest in physics. In 1934 he entered Moscow State University, earning his PhD in 1940. He then joined the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he remained for the rest of his career. Ginzburg also took on part-time teaching positions at Gorky State University in 1945 and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1968. From 1947 to 1952 he worked on the Soviet hydrogen bomb project . Though he made important advances in ferroelectricity, radio astronomy, and other subjects, Ginzburg was most fascinated by superconductivity . In the 1950s, he and Lev Landau developed a series of mathematical equations to describe type I superconductors. For that pioneering work, Ginzburg shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics with Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett. Besides the Nobel, Ginzburg also earned many other awards, including the 1947 Mandelstam Prize, the 1966 Lenin Prize, the 1991 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the 1994 Wolf Prize in Physics, the 1998 UNESCO Niels Bohr Medal, and the American Physical Society’s 1998 Nicholson Medal. He died at age 93 in 2009. (Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)

Date in History: 4 October 1916