Ilya Frank
Soviet physicist · Russia · On the map · Scientists · Lived 1908 to 1990 · aged 81
He explained why charged particles moving through certain materials emit that eerie blue glow - the phenomenon that now bears Cherenkov's name but earned Frank a share of the Nobel.
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Ilya Mikhailovich Frank was born on 23 October 1908 in the waning years of the Russian Empire. Working alongside Pavel Cherenkov and Igor Tamm, he built the theoretical framework that made sense of Cherenkov radiation - the light emitted when particles exceed the speed of light in a given medium. The three Soviet physicists shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics for the work. Frank collected Stalin Prizes in 1946 and 1953, and a USSR State Prize in 1971. He died on 22 June 1990, having spent his career turning strange optical effects into rigorous physics.
