Scientific director of uranium isotope separation for the Soviet atomic bomb
“A scientist is not a job title or a place of work — you don't become one by walking into a lab and starting to think. Being a scientist is a constant, sometimes agonizing, sometimes beautiful state.” — at a Komsomol prize ceremony, shortly before his death, 1984.
Soviet experimental physicist. In 1933, with M. M. Noskov, he discovered the photomagnetic effect in semiconductors (the Kikoin-Noskov effect) and pioneered measurements of the Hall effect in liquid metals and gyromagnetic ratios in superconductors. In 1943 Kurchatov recruited him to Laboratory No. 2, where he became scientific director of uranium isotope separation; he and Kurchatov were the only two from Lab No. 2 on the Technical Council of the Special Committee. He served as deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute (1960–1984), co-founded the magazine Kvant with Kolmogorov, and co-authored the standard Soviet physics textbook with his brother Abram. He kept a facsimile of the Dead Sea Scrolls in his office and read Hebrew.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1930Researcher, Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute (LFTI)
- 1933Co-discovered the photomagnetic effect in semiconductors with M. M. Noskov
- 1935Head of Electrical Phenomena Dept., Ural Physical-Technical Institute; moved to Sverdlovsk
- 1936Doktor Nauk in physics and mathematics
- 1937–1944Professor and Chair of General Physics, Ural Polytechnic Institute
- 1942Stalin Prize, 3rd class, for heavy-current measuring instruments
- 1943Joined Laboratory No. 2; scientific director of uranium isotope separation; Technical Council of Special Committee
- 1950Department head, Institute of Atomic Energy (IAE)
- 1953Elected Academician, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1960–1984Deputy director, Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy
- 1969Co-founded Kvant magazine with Kolmogorov; first editor-in-chief
Related historical events
Family origins and the war years
Isaak Kikoin was born on 15 March 1908 (Old Style) in Malye Zhagory, Kovno Governorate, today Žagarė in Lithuania. His father, Kushel Isaakovich Kikoin, a native of Igumen in Minsk Governorate, was from 1904 a teacher and head of the state Jewish school in Zhagory; his mother was Bunya Israilevna Maiofis.
In 1915, as Jewish residents were expelled from the front-line zone during World War I, the family moved to Lyutsin in Vitebsk Governorate, and in 1916 to Opochka in Pskov Governorate. Isaak began school in Opochka; when the family moved on to Pskov in 1921, he finished the First Unified Labor School in 1923 and entered the third year of the Pskov land-surveying technicum. He qualified as a land surveyor in 1925 and entered the physics and mechanics faculty of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute.
The war divided the family. His mother, Bunya Maiofis, was shot in February 1942 during the destruction of Pskov's Jewish population. Isaak himself was in the Urals. In 1933, with his diploma student Mikhail Noskov, he discovered the photomagnetolectric effect in semiconductors, the Kikoin-Noskov effect; after completing his degree in 1935 he headed a department at the Ural Physics and Technology Institute and moved that year to Sverdlovsk, where he also taught at the Ural Polytechnic Institute until 1944. On the doctorate the records differ: the Russian account gives a 1935 defence, another record places it in 1936.
When the war began, his department turned to defence tasks and developed high-current direct-current ammeters for metallurgy and electrolysis, work that earned him the Stalin Prize in 1942. For that prize another account gives a different reason: the invention and industrial introduction of magnetic fuzes for anti-tank mines.
1943 was also the year he joined Kurchatov's Laboratory No. 2.
His full name was Isaak Kushelevich Kikoin, Kushel being his father's name. His younger brother Abram Kikoin was also a physicist, and the brothers later wrote physics textbooks together.