Ivanenko, Dmytro

Ivanenko, Dmytro [Іваненко, Дмитро], b 29 July 1904 in Poltava, Poltava gubernia, d 30 December 1994 in Moscow. Theoretical physicist; brother of Oksana Ivanenko. After studying at Kharkiv University and graduating from Leningrad University (1927), he worked at a number of scientific research institutes in Leningrad, Kharkiv (the Ukrainian Physical-Technical Institute), Tomsk, Sverdlovsk, and Kyiv. He was arrested during the Stalinist terror and served his sentence in a GULAG labor camp. In 1943 he was appointed professor at Moscow University, and in 1949 he became an associate of the USSR Institute of the History of Science and Technology. He has made important contributions to the field of nuclear physics, cosmic radiation, gravitation, quantum mechanics, and mathematics. In 1929 he developed, with V. Fok, the theory of the parallel transfer of electron spinor wave functions. In 1932 he advanced the hypothesis that the atomic nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons. Simultaneously with I. Tamm (1934–6), he laid the foundations of the theory of specific nuclear forces, and then in parallel with Isaak Pomeranchuk and A. Sokolov (1944–8) he worked out the theory of electromagnetic radiation emitted by accelerated electrons. He proposed a new linear matrix geometry and non-linear spinor equations.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]