Lifshyts, Illia

Lifshyts, Illia or Lifshits, Ilia [Лівшиць, Ілля; Lifšyc', Illja], b 13 January 1917 in Kharkiv, d 23 October 1982 in Moscow. Theoretical physicist; full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1967 and the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1970. A graduate of Kharkiv University (1936) and the Kharkiv Polytechnical Institute (1938), he worked at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1937–68) and was a physics professor at Kharkiv University (1944–64). He moved to Moscow in 1968. He made significant contributions to the electron theory of metals, the dynamic theory of real crystals, the theory of disordered systems, and the kinetics of second-order phase transitions.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]