Igor TammIgor Yevgenyevich Tamm (8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, for their 1934 discovery of Cherenkov radiation. Tamm was born in Vladivostok, Russian Empire. In 1913-1914 he studied at the University of Edinburgh together with his school-friend Boris Hessen.
On 1 May 1923, Tamm began teaching physics at the Second Moscow State University. The same year, he finished his first scientific paper, Electrodynamics of the Anisotropic Medium in the Special Theory of Relativity. Igor Tamm is credited with first theorizing the concept of phonons. Since this concept was introduced in 1932, these quantities have been integrated into the branch of physics known as quantum mechanics. They are part of emerging and continuing research in physics. A phonon is often classified as a " quasiparticle" or " collective excitation, " which generally means that it can be observed as a phenomenon but not specifically extracted as an individual physical object. In late 1940s-early 1950s Tamm was involved in the Soviet thermonuclear bomb project, in 1949-1953 he spent most of his time in the " secret city" of Sarov, working as a head of the theoretical group developing the hydrogen bomb, however he retired from the project and returned to the Moscow Lebedev Physical Institute after the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb in 1953. Tamm died in Moscow, Soviet Union, now Russia. The Lunar crater Tamm is named after him. Unit 9
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At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he joined the army as a volunteer field medic. In 1917 he joined the Revolutionary movement and became an active anti-War campaigner, serving on revolutionary committees after the March Revolution. He returned to the Moscow State University from which he graduated in 1918.
