Igor Tamm

Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm was born 8 July 1895 in the Russian Empire. In 1934, working with Pavel Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, he developed the theoretical explanation for Cherenkov radiation — the electromagnetic shock wave that produces a characteristic blue glow. The trio shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and its demonstration. Along the way Tamm predicted the phonon, the quantum unit of vibrational energy in solids. In 1951 he and Andrei Sakharov proposed the tokamak, a magnetic-confinement design that became the blueprint for fusion reactor research worldwide. He died 12…