Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm

Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm
(1895 - 1971)

Soviet physicist who shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics with Pavel A. Cherenkov and Ilya M. Frank for his efforts in explaining Cherenkov radiation.
Tamm graduated from Moscow State University in 1918 and taught there from 1924 to 1937. His early studies of unique forms of electron bonding ("Tamm surface levels") on the surfaces of crystalline solids had important applications in the later development of solid-state semiconductor devices. In 1934 Cherenkov had discovered that light is emitted when gamma rays pass through a liquid medium. In 1936 Tamm and Frank explained this phenomenon as the emission of light waves by electrically charged particles moving faster in a medium than the speed of light. Tamm spent the latter decades of his career at the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, where he worked on methods for controlling thermonuclear fusion reactions.