- Person
- Vitaly Ginzburg
- Lived
- 1916–2009
- Field
- Theoretical physics
- From
- Russian
The story
Vitaly Ginzburg believed that every physicist should have a broad view of the whole field, not only of their own speciality. Over a long career at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow he worked on optics, radio waves, superconductivity, ferroelectrics, plasma physics and astrophysics, and he saw how easily researchers could lose sight of the larger landscape. To help, he drew up a list of what he considered the most important and interesting open problems in physics and astrophysics.
He kept revising it for decades. In 1971 the list included 17 problems, and by 1985 it had grown to 20. In 1999 he published a list of 30 problems for the twenty-first century. They ranged from controlled nuclear fusion, high-temperature superconductivity and metallic hydrogen to Bose-Einstein condensation, nanotubes and the behaviour of matter in extremely strong magnetic fields. In particle physics they took in quarks and gluons, grand unification, neutrino mass and string theory, and in astrophysics gravitational waves, inflation, black holes, the formation of galaxies, dark matter, gamma-ray bursts and the origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays.
Alongside the list he set out three great problems of a deeper kind: the increase of entropy and the arrow of time, the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and whether the origin of life and thought can be explained by physics alone.
Ginzburg presented the list in his 2003 Nobel lecture, and it was published again in his 2005 book About Science, Myself and Others. The physicist Ivan Bozovic, who knew the family, called it simply the Ginzburg list. Ginzburg also ran a famous weekly seminar in Moscow for nearly half a century, and the list served a similar purpose: keeping physicists aware of what was happening beyond their own corner of the subject.
Many problems on the list have since seen striking progress. Gravitational waves have been detected, Bose-Einstein condensates are made in laboratories, and superconductors that work at ever higher temperatures continue to be found. Others, such as the nature of dark matter and the arrow of time, remain as open as when he wrote them down.
Why it matters
Ginzburg's list became a widely read guide for students and researchers, encouraging them to look beyond their own work towards the great open questions of science.
About Vitaly Ginzburg
Soviet-Jewish physicist whose Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity won the 2003 Nobel Prize, and who survived Stalin’s antisemitic purges to become a fearless public voice.
More about Vitaly Ginzburg
- Vitaly Ginzburg founded a department to train physicistsIn 1968 Vitaly Ginzburg founded the Department of Problems of Physics and Astrophysics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, which he headed for decades.
- Vitaly Ginzburg helped bring genetics back to the USSRVitaly Ginzburg was among the scientists who helped end the dominance of Trofim Lysenko, the politically connected opponent of genetics, allowing modern genetic science to return to the Soviet Union.
- Vitaly Ginzburg co-created the theory of superconductorsIn 1950 Vitaly Ginzburg and Lev Landau published the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity, which became fundamental to all later work on superconductors and won Ginzburg the 2003 Nobel Prize.
- Vitaly Ginzburg developed a theory of cosmic ray originsVitaly Ginzburg developed a theory of the origin of cosmic rays, the high-energy particles that rain on Earth from space, work honoured by the cosmic ray physicists' Ó Ceallaigh Medal.
- Vitaly Ginzburg explained how radio waves cross the skyDuring the Second World War and after, Vitaly Ginzburg developed the theory of how electromagnetic waves travel through plasmas such as the ionosphere, vital for long-distance radio.
- Vitaly Ginzburg's theory underpins MRI magnetsSuperconducting magnets in hospital MRI scanners and particle accelerators rely on type-II superconductors, whose behaviour is described by the theory Vitaly Ginzburg helped create.
- Vitaly Ginzburg ran a physics seminar for 1,700 sessionsFrom the mid-1950s Vitaly Ginzburg ran a weekly Wednesday physics seminar in Moscow that drew scientists from across the city and beyond, closing it at its 1,700th session in November 2001.
Sources
- Vitaly Ginzburg Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.