TAMM Igor

Academician Igor Tamm was half German (his grandfather, Theodore Tamm, in the middle of last century moved from Thuringia to Russia and married the daughter of a landowner of Kherson). Filling in once again another form, Igor knew: expect trouble. And what else could be expected from such biographical data, . as "suspicious" origin, . last Menshevik, . studied abroad, . brother in 1936, arrested and shot as an "enemy of the people", . father, . Engineer, . lived in German-occupied Kiev, and for that later appeared in jail,
. Igor Tamm himself to a hundred times to arrest and to declare an "enemy of the people". But, fortunately, this did not happen.
Future great physicist was born in 1895. Another schoolboy, he really carried away by politics, delirious revolution, hated tsarist and considered himself an orthodox Marxist. Concerned for the fate of his hot son, the parents considered it prudent to send him abroad.
Alas, in Scotland, at Edinburgh University, he studied the young Tamm continued Marx, to participate in political rallies. Science then, in 1914, strangely enough, it takes little.
Tamm returned home shortly before the First World War and became a student of physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow University. Politics continues to not let. A young man - at a crossroads: it is already 22, but still in science, he does not see his vocation.
Life bore him to the southern cities of Russia. In Simferopol, in the Tauride University, he worked with prominent scholars I. I. Frenkel and A. I. Kordyshem. Throughout the fate of Tamm determined he had a meeting in Odessa, at the Polytechnic Institute with a remarkable physicist L. I. Mandelstam.
In the early 20-ies Igor moved to Moscow, and plunged into theoretical physics. "All my thoughts are occupied by physics," - he wrote in one of the letters of the time. Almost his first scientific work on the theory of relativity appreciated even the great Einstein, and adopted for publication in the German scientific journal.
. The famous Dutch physicist Paul Ehrenfest, having become acquainted with the works of Tamm, procured him a scholarship to the practice of science abroad
. Nearly half met Igor in the largest physics laboratories of Holland and Germany.

With Ehrenfest they became friends. Tamm and made friends with Paul Dirac, met with Albert Einstein and many other celebrities. Igor was returning home full of strength and hope, not knowing what a terrible time coming ...
In 1936, arrested beloved brother Igor Tamm, a prominent engineer Leonid Tamm. He was accused of bombing of coke oven batteries in the Donbass. Were shot each Tamm, physicist Boris Hessen and the beloved disciple Igor Tamm Simeon Shubin. Tamm himself was not touched, perhaps, only by sheer luck - the machine of repression, too, sometimes faltering ...
Tamm developed the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles. When in 1943, scientists started to build the atomic bomb, it is not immediately admitted to a secret nuclear affairs. The reason - personal data and personal distaste A. A. Zhdanov. Only in 1946 the great scientist attracted to the solution of some "not so secret" tasks, and two years later, after the death of Zhdanov, Igor joined the creation of the hydrogen bomb. This happened thanks to the promotion and. V. Kurchatov.
The group was composed of Tamm's most talented physics, in particular, Andrei Sakharov. Worked in a top-secret institute Arzamas-16 (in the city of Sarov). Field trips outside the zone were rare.
August 12, 1953 at the remote test site explosion of monstrous force. Born the world's first hydrogen bomb.
Now the finest hour Tamm. In 1958, Tamm, along with two other scientists - and. M. Frank and P. A. Cherenkov radiation - won the Nobel Prize. For the first time our physicists have become Nobel laureates. However, Tamm himself believed that he had received no prize for the best work of their. He even wanted to give the prize to the State, but he replied that it is not necessary.
According to his relatives, with money Tamm parted easily and frequently distributed to the needy, referring to the fact that he "still did not spend the money". His house was always open to guests. Tamm was a wonderful storyteller. He spoke quickly, almost patter. Someone even jokingly coined a unit rate of speech - "one Tamm". Academic good command of English, French and German languages, weaker - the Italian and Dutch.

He worked too quickly. A stack of sheets covered with calculations, grew up before our eyes. Being always at the forefront of science, Tamm, was extremely sensitive to the most "crazy" ideas. No wonder he participated in the academic commission ... problem of "Bigfoot". He is a physicist, fiercely fought for the revival of national genetics, defeated Lysenko.

By the nature of Tamm was an incorrigible optimist. Everyone knew his love for traveling, mountaineering, a survey of caves. Somewhere in deep caves, he probably picked up the heavy incurable disease caused by a virus breeding in excreta of bats. The disease has led to the paralysis of respiratory muscles. Igor could not breathe very. He underwent surgery on his throat and hooked up a special machine for forced breathing. From 1968 until the end of life, more than three years, he was doomed to almost total immobility, could not do without breathing machine.

Yet Tamm continued to work. Only once he complained, saying that now understands the feeling of a beetle stuck on a pin ...

The most advanced methods of treatment proved to be powerless. Tamm died April 12, 1971. He lived for 75 years. Despite everything, it was a happy life ...