- Person
- Vitaly Ginzburg
- Lived
- 1916–2009
- Field
- Theoretical physics
- From
- Russian
The story
When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics, it pointed to a very practical side of the work it was honouring. Superconducting material, it noted, is used in magnetic resonance imaging for medical examinations and in particle accelerators in physics. The prize went to Alexei Abrikosov, Vitaly Ginzburg and Anthony Leggett for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids.
Superconductors carry electric current without resistance when cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero, and they push magnetic fields out of their interior. Some, called type I, do this completely but lose their superconductivity in fairly weak magnetic fields. The Nobel-winning theory of 1972, based on pairs of electrons, explained these materials but proved inadequate for the technically most important ones. Those, called type II, allow superconductivity and magnetism to exist together and stay superconducting even in very strong fields, which makes them ideal for building powerful electromagnets.
The key to understanding them lay in a theory Ginzburg had written with Lev Landau in Moscow in 1950. The Ginzburg–Landau equations included a parameter that divides superconductors into the two types. In 1957 Abrikosov used them to show that a magnetic field enters a type-II superconductor as a regular lattice of tiny quantised vortices, while the material around them stays superconducting. The Academy noted that the theory Ginzburg and others had formulated for type I proved so comprehensive that it was also valid for the new type.
The Academy also observed that theories formulated in the 1950s had gained new importance as materials were made superconducting at ever higher temperatures and in ever stronger magnetic fields. Wikipedia lists MRI machines, engines and new maglev trains among the applications of the research.
In a hospital MRI scanner, coils of type-II superconducting wire carry large currents without loss, producing the steady, strong magnetic field needed to image soft tissue without X-rays. A theory first written down in Moscow in 1950, at a time when Ginzburg was under political attack, thus ended up inside hospitals around the world.
Why it matters
MRI scanners built with superconducting magnets rely on the physics Ginzburg helped explain, giving doctors detailed images of the body without ionising radiation.
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 kept a famous list of physics' big questionsFor three decades Vitaly Ginzburg compiled and updated a list of the most important unsolved problems in physics, publishing 30 problems for the 21st century in 1999.
- 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 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
- The Nobel Prize in Physics 2003, Press release NobelPrize.org
- Vitaly Ginzburg Wikipedia
- Ginzburg–Landau theory Wikipedia
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