Evgeny Lifshitz

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See also: Lipschütz

Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz (Russian: Евгений Михайлович Лифшиц; February 21, 1915 – October 29, 1985) was a leading Soviet physicist from a Jewish origin and the brother of Ilya Mikhailovich Lifshitz.

(Some commonly encountered alternative transliterations of his names include Yevgeny or Evgenii and Lifshits.)

Lifshitz is well known in general relativity for coauthoring the BKL conjecture concerning the nature of a generic curvature singularity. As of 2006, this is widely regarded as one of the most important open problems in the subject of classical gravitation.

With Lev Landau, Lifshitz co-authored an ambitious series of physics textbooks, in which the two aimed to provide a graduate-level introduction to the entire field of physics. These books are still considered invaluable and continue to be widely used. Lifshitz was the second of only 43 people ever to pass Landau's "Theoretical Minimum" examination.

The wife of Lev Landau strongly criticized his scientific abilities, hinting at how much of his work was done by himself, and how much by Landau. (Of their textbooks, the joke is made, "Not one word of Landau, not one thought of Lifshitz.")

[edit] External links

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Evgeny Lifshitz". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.

[edit] References

• Belinskii, V.; Khalatnikov, I.; and Lifschitz, E. (1970). "Oscillatory approach to a singular point in the relativistic cosmology". Adv. in Phys. 19: 525-573.  The paper introducing the BKL conjecture.

• Landau, L. D.; and Lifshits, E. M. (1976). Mechanics (3rd ed.). London: Pergamon. ISBN 0-08-021022-8.  Vol. 1 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Landau, L. D.; and Lifshits, E. M. (1971). Classical Theory of Fields (3rd ed.). London: Pergamon. ISBN 0-08-016019-0.  Vol. 2 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Landau, L. D.; and Lifshits, E. M.; (1977). Quantum Mechanics: Non-relativistic Theory (3rd ed.). London: Pergamon. ISBN 0-08-020940-8.  Vol. 3 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Berestetskii, V. B.; Lifshits, E. M.; and Pitaevskii, L. P. (1982). Quantum electrodynamics (2nd ed.). London: Pergamon. 0-080-26503-0.  Vol. 4 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Lifshits, E. M.; and Pitaevskii, L. P. (1981). Physical kinetics. Oxford: Pergamon. ISBN 0-08-026480-8.  Vol. 10 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.