Alexander Pechenkin L.I. Mandelstam and His School in Physics Second Edition L.I. Mandelstam and His School in Physics Alexander Pechenkin L.I. Mandelstam and His School in Physics Second Edition 123 Alexander Pechenkin Schoolof Philosophy LomonosovMoscow State University Moscow,Russia S. VavilovInstitute for the History of ScienceandTechnology Russian Academy of Sciences Moscow,Russia ISBN978-3-030-17684-6 ISBN978-3-030-17685-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17685-3 1stedition:©SpringerInternationalPublishingSwitzerland2014 2ndedition:©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2019 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained hereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregard tojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations. ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Preface to the Second Edition Thefirsteditionofthisbookappearedfiveyearsago.Whatremarkableworkshave appearedintheliteratureaboutthehistoryofSoviet(andRussian)scienceoverthis period?Itisworthpointingtothebookwhichisdirectlyconnectedwiththesubject matter of the present book: “Sergei Mikhailovich Rytov. Life story, recollections, interviews, notes, verses, documents” (composed by E. Berezanskaysa and N. Rytova, Moscow, 2015). S. Rytov is one of Mandelstam’s disciples of the second generation.ItisalsoworthmentioningV.V.Kudriavtsev’sDr.Sci.thesis“Scientific Schools inRussian Radiophysics” (2018). The main conceptual context which is present in the above books is connected withtheconceptofascientificschoolwhichisemphasizedinthepresentbook,too. It should be pointed out that the second edition is also engaged in a number philosophical problems: what is probability in theoretical physics, what kind interpretation of quantum mechanics was popular in the USSR, how the philo- sophical discussions entered into the scientist’s career. The history of Russian science attracted the English-speaking historians of scienceasbefore:LorenGraham,LonelyIdeas:CanRussiaCompete?(MITPress, 2013),andMariaRogacheva,ThePrivateWorldofSovietScientistsfromStalinto Gorbachev (Cambridge University Press, 2017). However, the most remarkable phenomenon in the field, to which our book belongs, is the publication of S.I. Vavilov’ s diaries (two volumes, 2014, 2016). S.I. Vavilov (1891–1951), the brother of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, who was arrestedin1940anddiedinprison,oneofthegreatfiguresinSovietUnionscience. He was Director of Institute of Physics (FIAN) for which Mandelstam worked (1934–1951); he was President of the USSR Academy of Science (1945–1951) (see: A.Kojevnikov.President ofStalin’sAcademy. The Mask andResponsibility of Sergei Vavilov—www.history.ubc.ca/sites/default/biblio/uj). S.I. Vavilov’s experience as it is presented in his diaries cannot be overesti- mated. He wrote the notes for himself; he constructed an emotional model of the area within which he lived and the portraits of people with whom he spoke. In what follows the text of the first edition is mainly reproduced. v vi PrefacetotheSecondEdition Theessentialsupplementsarethefollowing:achapteraboutMichailLeontovich who was Mandelstam’s student and became one of the leaders of the Soviet ther- monuclear project, additional comments concerning Boris Hessen who was the Communist Party activist and Mandelstam’s coworker, and a section on the philo- sophicalandpoliticaldiscussionofMandelstam’slecturesonphysics,thediscussion which occurred posthumously in thebeginning ofthe 1950s(Chap. 14). Moscow, Russia Alexander Pechenkin Preface to the First Edition This book is concerned with the personal trajectory of the Soviet prominent physicist Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam (1879–1944). Very often Russian books dedicatedtobiographiesofSovietscientistsmakeaimtorestoreahistoricaljustice, to return a person who has been forgotten or concealed for political reasons to the history of science. L.I. Mandelstam has not been forgotten. His five-volume complete works have been published in 1947–1955. These “Complete Works” containabiographyofMandelstamwrittenbyhisclosestfriendsandcollaborators. Additionally, a number of biographical and historical essays have been published concerning Mandelstam and his creative work. This book, therefore, aims to sys- tematize what has been written about Mandelstam, to emphasize the controversial points,andtotakeintoconsiderationtheunpublisheddocumentswhichwouldshed light on Mandelstam as a scientist and a personality. This book is not only about Mandelstam as a teacher, a researcher, and a per- sonality. This book is about a historical phenomenon named the Mandelstam sci- entificschool,too.Thisschoolwasoneofthesocialandcognitivestructureswhich determinedthedevelopmentofSovietphysics.Inthisconnection,weshouldtouch upon the phenomenon of scientific school in general; we need to explain how scientific schools arise, influence science, and come to crisis. ThisbookisalsoaboutthedevelopmentofthegreatSovietscience.Mandelstam wasnotdirectlyconnectedwithnuclearphysicsandspaceresearch,whichbothare popular symbols of the great Soviet science. True, his former student Mikhail AlexandrovichLeontovichcontributedtoplasmaphysics(since1951hewasHead oftheoreticalresearchincontrolledthermonuclearfusionattheInstituteofAtomic Energy—now the I.V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy). The student of Mandelstam’s students Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov contributed a lot to the discovery of masers. In 1964, he received the Nobel Prize (together with N.G. Basov and H. Townes) for his contribution to quantum electronics. The list of the achievements of representatives of the Mandelstam school could becontinued.However,themostimportantcontributionoftheMandelstamschool to Soviet science was the development of scientific discourse and hence the development of scientific culture. Mandelstam, his friends, collaborators, and vii viii PrefacetotheFirstEdition students were very careful in formulating the conceptual framework of physics. They discussed very subtle details concerning scientific conceptions. They liked discussions and cultivated the discussions of the foundations of physics not only directly(byorganizingspecialseminarsandlectures),butalsoindirectlywithinthe framework of teaching and research in special issues of physics. Contrary to the widespread belief, Soviet philosophical discussions of the foundations of science were not separated off the Western discussions in this field. Mandelstam and his friendsandstudentsreadtheworldliteratureandexplicitlyandimplicitlypursueda policy offreedom with respect to such discussions. Moscow, Russia Alexander Pechenkin Acknowledgements Theauthor isgrateful tothepersonnelofthearchiveswhereheworked.Theseare archivesofthefollowingestablishments:DépartementalesduBas–Rhin,Deutsches Museum, Siemens Forum, Harvard University, American Philosophical Society, Moscow State University, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Lebedev Physical Institute (FIAN). The author also thanks the librarians (Russian State Library (formerly the Lenin library), Russian State scientific-technological library, The New York Public Library, and university libraries—Harvard University, Penn University (USA), Cambridge University, Open University (UK), Lomonosov Moscow University). The author is grateful to the Fulbright program (USA), the British Academy (UK), German Museum of the history of science and technology (Deutsches Museum),andtheChemicalHeritageFoundationforgrantssupportinghisworkat the foreign archives and libraries. The author is grateful to C. Bissell (Open University, UK), V.P. Vizgin, A.V. Andreev,K.A.Tomilin(theyallwork(worked)fortheS.I.VavilovInstituteforthe History of Science and Technology, Russia), V.M. Berezanskaya (P.N. Lebedev Institute of Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), K. Hall (Central European University), G. Holton (Harvard University, USA), S. Schweber (Brandeis University), R. Siegmund-Schulte (Agder University College, Norway), and H. Kant (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) for illumi- native discussions and useful comments. The author remembers his fruitful discussions with Rein Vihalemm (Tartu University, Estonia 1938–2015) and E.S. Boyko (Institute for the History of Science and Technology of Russian Academy of Sciences, 1939–2005). E.S. Boyko passed some material concerning A.A.Andronovtotheauthor. LidiaScharapenko(atranslator)kindlyhelpedhimto translate some of difficult German texts. Moscow, Russia Alexander Pechenkin ix Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 Why L.I. Mandelstam’s Biography Is Interesting . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 What Has Been Written About L.I. Mandelstam?. . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3 About Key Points and Blank Spots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.4 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1.5 The Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2 Youth and Strasbourg Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.1 Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.2 At Strasbourg University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.3 Strasbourg University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.4 Ferdinand Braun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.5 Braun’s Philosophy of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.6 Richard von Mises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3 The Strasbourg Period: Radio-engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.1 Radio-engineering at Strasbourg University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.2 Mandelstam’s Degree Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 3.3 Experiments with Loose Coupling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.4 The F. Braun Energy Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 3.5 On the Theory of F. Braun’s Transmitter. Coupling and Coherency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.6 A Definite Phase Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.7 Radio Business. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3.8 L.I. Mandelstam Criticizes J.A. Fleming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.9 The Mandelstam–Papalexy Induction Dynamometer . . . . . . . . . 50 4 The Strasbourg Period: Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.1 Mandelstam and Optics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.2 “On Optically Homogeneous and Turbid Mediums” . . . . . . . . . 56 4.3 The Mandelstam Criticism of M. Planck’s Theory . . . . . . . . . . 59 xi