PIONEER OF RUSSIAN THEORETICAL PHYSICS (DEDICATED TO THE 125TH ANNIVERSARY OF BIRTH OF YAKOV ILICH FRENKEL)

Yakov Ilyich Frenkel was a theoretical physicist rightfully taking a place of honor among prominent scientists in the entire history of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute (University). He was widely known worldwide. He repeatedly met with the most famous scientist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein (1879–1955), the creator of the special and general theory of relativity, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his services to theoretical physics. A graduate of the St. Petersburg University, Ya.I. Frenkel, was the first Russian physicist to become a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, which allowed him to work in scientific centers of Western Europe, meeting with famous physicists of the time in 1925–1926. Ya.I. Frenkel was invited to give lectures at the University of Minneapolis (USA) in 1930–1931. He also visited a number of other US research centers. From 1921 until the end of his life, Ya.I. Frenkel worked at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute and at the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute. In 1929, he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in 1934 he became a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences. In 1947, Ya.I. Frenkel was awarded the Stalin (State) Prize of the first degree for the monograph «Kinetic Theory of Liquids».