L.I. Mandelstam and His School in Physics (2^nd Ed., 2nd ed. 2019)

This biography of the famous Soviet physicist Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam (1889?1944), who became a Professor at Moscow State University in 1925 and an Academician (the highest scientific title in the USSR) in 1929, describes his contributions to both physics and technology. It also discusses the scientific community that formed around him, commonly known as the Mandelstam School. By doing so, it places Mandelstam?s life story in its cultural context: the context of German University (until 1914), the First World War, the Civil War, and the development of the Socialist Revolution (until 1925) and the young socialist country. The book considers various general issues, such as the impact of German scientific culture on Russian science; the problems and fates of Russian intellectuals during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years; the formation of the Soviet Academy of Science, the State Academy; and the transformation of the system of higher education in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s. Further, it reconstructs Mandelstam?s philosophy of science and his approach to the social and ethical function of science and science education based on his fundamental writings and lecture notes. This reconstruction is enhanced by extensive use of previously unpublished archive material as well as the transcripts of personal interviews conducted by the author.

The book also discusses the biographies of Mandelstam?s friends and collaborators: German mathematician and philosopher Richard von Mises, Soviet Communist Party official and philosopher B.M.Hessen, Russian specialist in radio engineering N.D.Papalexy, the specialists in non-linear dynamics A.A.Andronov, S.E. Chaikin, A.A.Vitt and the plasma physicist M.A.Leontovich.

This second, extended edition reconstructs the social and economic backgrounds of Mandelstam and his colleagues, describing their positions at the universities and the institutes belonging to the Academy of Science. Additionally, Mandelstam?s philosophy of science is investigated in connection with the ideological attacks that occurred after Mandelstam?s death, particularly the great mathematician A.D.Alexandrov?s criticism of Mandelstam?s operationalism.

Preface

Introduction

1. Who was Mandelstam for science?

2. Literature about Mandelstam.

3. About the ‘blank spots”.

4. The sources.

6. Acknowledgements.

1. Youth.

2. At Strasbourg University.

3. Strasbourg University.

4. Ferdinand Braun

5. F. Braun’s philosophy of science.

6. Richard von Mises.

Chapter 2. The Strasbourg years: radio engineering.

1. Radio engineering at Strasbourg University

2. Mandelstam’s degree work.

3. Experiments with weak coupling

4. F. Braun’s energy scheme.

6. The phase shift of oscillations.

7. Business in radio engineering.

8. L. Mandelstam – J. Fleming polemics.

9. The Mandelstam-Papalexy induction dynamometer.

Chapter 3. The Strasbourg period: optics.

1. Historiography: Mandelstam and optics.

2. On optically homogeneous and turbid medium. Mandelstam attacks Lord Rayleigh.

3. The Mandelstam criticism of  the M. Planck theory of dispersion.

4. M. Planck’s response. Polemics.

5. The years of democracy: I. Sobelman criticizes Mandelstam.

6. ‘On the roughness of the fluid free surface”.

7. “A radiation  of the light source, located very close to boundary between two  transparent media”.

8. The radio-engineering genesis of L.I. Mandelstam’s optics.

9. Mythology

Chapter 4. The years of Pilgrimage (1914-1925).

2. Tiflis (Tbilisi).

3. Odessa

4. The central radio laboratory.

5. What do we learn about Mandelstam’s life from his and his wife’s letters to Richard von Mises?

Chapter 5. Moscow State University (1925-1935).

1. Invitation.

2. At the university.

3. “About the main groups of professors”.

4. Boris Hessen

6. Teaching as an ethical position.

7. “Dear friend, dear Mis…” Mandelstam’s letters to R. von Mises.

Chapter 6. Research in optics (Odessa – Moscow).

1. The Brillouin –Mandelstam effect.

2. The combinational scattering of light (Rahman effect).

4. The Nobel Prize.

Chapter 7. The Mandelstam school: the early steps and results.

optics, 1925-1929.

3. The Mandelstam and Leontovich article on quantum mechanics, 1928.

3. Andronov-Leontovich and Mandelstam-Andronov-Leontovich.

4. Parametric Generators.

Chapter 8. The Mandelstam’s school: the theory of non-linear oscillations.

1. Mandelstam and the theory of non-linear oscillations

2. The rise of the concept of self-oscillations.

3. The problem of multivibrator. Andronov- Vitt.

5. The method of a small parameter. A slowly variable amplitude.

6. The First All-Union conference.

Chapter 9. Continuation. The Mandelstam-Andronov school.

1. Terminology

3. In search for self-oscillations.

4. From concentrated systems to distributed ones.

5. The “self-oscillatory ideology” versus the “self-oscillatory paradigm.

Chapter 10.  M.A. Leontovich and nuclear physics

1.     The biography of Leontovich

3.     Leontovich’s research for the Institute of Nuclear Physics.

4.     E.P.Velikhov,  Leontovich’s  assistant.

Chapter 11. Moscow State University and the Academy of Sciences

1. Institute of Physics (Academy of Sciences of the USSR)

2. School of Mandelstam, Research Institute of Physics (NIIF) and Institute of Physics (FIAN)

4. Ya.L. Alpert, V.V. Migulin, and P.A. Ryazin.

Chapter 12.  The social backgrounds of the Mandelstam school.

1.     Science and socialism

2.     “Laboratory life” of the Mandestam’s school.

1. Borovoie.

2. Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky.

3. Academician election.

4. The last year in Moscow.

Chapter 14. The Mandelstam operationalism.

1. In which way the term “operationalism’ was applied to Mandelstam’s methodology.

2. Mandelstam’s operationalist statements

3. Operationalism for classic physics.

4. Mandelstam’s operationalism and Bridgman’s operationalism.

5. The philosophical foundations of Mandelstam’s operationalism.

6. The “appropriate idealization”.

Chapter 15. The Mandelstam interpretation of quantum mechanics in the context of the 1930-1940 discussions.

§ 2. Controversies in the interpretations of Mandelstam’s interpretation.

§ 3. Definition of the ensemble interpretation.

§ 4. The “real” and ideal (Gibbsian) ensembles.

§ 5. One more distinction: hidden variables.

§ 6. The Soviet ensemble interpretations. K.V. Nikolsky.

§ 7. The prerequisites of the Mandelstam interpretation.

§ 8. B.M. Hessen and A.A. Andronov.

Chapter 16.  The Mandelstam philosophy of science from the point of view of the postwar discussions.

1.     The ideological attack against  the Mandelstam philosophy of science.

3.     The Mandelstam-Alexandrov controversy from the point of view of the contemporary discussions.

Conclusion.

Literature.

Archive sources.

Alexander Alexandrovich Pechenkin graduated from the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology in 1963, and received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Philosophy at the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1968. In 1976 he graduated from the Mechanico-Mathematical Faculty (School) at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

He has received various grants and honors from the Russian Foundation of Scientific Research in Humanities and from the Russian Foundation of Fundamental Research and other international institutions, including:

-          1995 the German Museum (Munich) three-month fellowship

-          1998–2003 State Stipend of Russian Federation

-          1997–1998 Fulbright Program Grant

-          1998 American Institute of Physics. Grant in Aid

-          1997, 1998, 2002 the British Academy fellowships

-          2001 Central European University fellowship

-          2004 American Philosophical Society, John Slater fellowship

-          2004, 2005, 2006, 2017 Chemical Heritage Foundation Library fellowships

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Represents a unique biography of L. I. Mandelstam, the famous Russian scientist

Is the only “collective biography” of the community of scientists of the Mandelstam school

Analyses the influence of German scientific culture on Russian science

Describes the development of science in the context of young militarized economy

Extends the first edition of this book