KONSTANTIN ALEXANDROVICH LEONTIEV

On March 4, 1932, in Moscow, in the 42nd year of his life, Professor Konstantin Alexandrovich Leontiev, head of the Physics Institute of Saratov State University, organizer of a scientific-research laboratory and indefatigable director of the institute, died, having devoted to this work 15 years of his short but brilliant scientific life.

The son of a public-school teacher, K. A. graduated in 1911 from the physico-mathematical faculty of Moscow University. K. A.’s candidate’s dissertation, for which he received a gold medal, was written on the topic “The Theory of Magneto-Optical Phenomena,” proposed by Prof. P. N. Lebedev. It was planned thereafter to keep K. A. at the university. But this did not come about, since in the spring of 1911 P. N. Lebedev, together with his students, left the university in protest against the policy pursued by Minister Kasso, and began organizing a new physical laboratory. P. N. Lebedev’s chief assistant in this difficult undertaking was P. P. Lazarev, then professor of physics at Shanyavsky University. From the beginning of 1911, in the physical laboratory of Shanyavsky University, which at that time was located in house No. 14 on Volkhonka (now the Communist Academy), K. A., under the direction of P. P. Lazarev, began scientific work on the study of the temperature jump in a rarefied gas, which was a development of P. P. Lazarev’s own work and, in idea, belonged to the cycle of investigations of the Lebedev school. Possessing excellent mathematical abilities, an outstanding memory, and the unquestionable talent of an experimenter, K. A. at once stood out then among the beginning physicists. His numerous reports at the colloquia in the Lebedev laboratory

and at Shanyavsky University, devoted to reviews of the most difficult theoretical works, vividly revealed K. A.’s exceptional abilities.

In the autumn of 1911, Lebedev organized, also at Shanyavsky University, a new Physics Laboratory in the basement of house No. 20 on Mertvyi Lane, and K. A. was invited there as a laboratory assistant. Here he continued the work he had already begun under the direction of P. P. Lazarev on the investigation of the temperature jump. The beginning of K. A.’s work in Lebedev’s laboratory on Mertvyi Lane coincided with the grave illness of P. N. Lebedev, who died on March 1, 1912. Although, therefore, K. A. did not work under the direct supervision of P. N. Lebedev, the scientific traditions of Lebedev—who himself feared no experimental difficulties and instilled in his pupils the idea that a physicist must know how to make with his own hands everything needed for his work—were forever assimilated by K. A. and gave him the necessary strength in the most difficult undertakings. K. A. already then had an excellent command of lathe work and glassblowing, and had fully mastered practical optics and the photographic process in all its details.

In 1913 K. A.’s first scientific work appeared—“On the Temperature Jump at the Boundary of a Gas and an Absorbing Wall.” This work, connected with serious experimental difficulties, was splendidly carried out by K. A. and showed at the same time that at twenty-three he was already a fully formed scientific worker. In 1915 K. A. was enlisted by P. P. Lazarev for work on organizing, under the Zemstvo, the production of medical thermometers. Working day and night, now as a physicist, now as a glassblower, K. A. brilliantly coped with the task assigned to him and in the shortest time created the production of thermometers, which until then had been a foreign secret.

In 1918 K. A. was invited as a lecturer to Saratov University, where in 1921 he was confirmed as professor and head of the physics institute.

One involuntarily recalls that time, a time when the premises of the scientific laboratory were empty and lifeless. This was the legacy left by the hard years of war, and it was necessary to possess exceptional energy, capacity for work, and love for the cause in order to make scientific life begin here at that time.

To create a working atmosphere, to teach people not to fear the most difficult working conditions and, when necessary, to stand at the machine oneself—such was K. A.’s method. He himself always served as an example of this, sometimes working at night, personally taking part, during the first difficult period of the laboratory’s life, in the repair and manufacture of the necessary apparatus, and at the same time constantly sharing with his collaborators his exceptionally wide-ranging knowledge, his plans for scientific work, and his aspirations. Both this method and this manner of working attracted people to him.

By 1924, in the newly organized laboratory, 10 scientific research works had already been completed, and in the immediate ensuing...

Over the years the laboratory continued to expand rapidly, concentrating its activity chiefly on questions of electromagnetic oscillations, which constituted its principal line of work.

The investigation carried out by K. A. in 1924 on the detecting action of a gas in an annular electrodeless discharge, and the parallel investigation, conducted under his direction, of the Schlemilch detector, led K. A. to a theoretical study of the phenomenon of detection and to the study of the operating regime of oscillatory circuits. The result of these works was an original method, proposed by K. A., for determining the dielectric constants of liquids in undamped waves. This latter work was closely connected with the large investigations then being carried out on magnetic susceptibility and the magnetic rotation of the plane of polarization of binary liquid systems (Prof. Trifonov), as well as with the study of certain physicochemical properties of these systems. All these investigations formed a cycle of works that led to interesting results and revealed the possibility of applying certain methods in the field of physicochemical analysis. The further development of K. A.’s method gave grounds for assuming its applicability to the study of the dielectric constants of gases, which was also confirmed by a special investigation. In the development of this whole line of work, the method of determining dielectric constants in undamped decimeter waves is being tested, and a series of preliminary works is being undertaken on the study of the regime of generators of ultrashort and decimeter waves, which subsequently formed an independent cycle. One of these investigations established a similarity between the field pattern near a tube generator with a wavelength of 4 m and the sound field of a tuning fork, which was later explained in a separate theoretical study; another elucidated a no less interesting picture of the field of a generator operating at a considerably greater wavelength.

At the same time K. A., by means of a highly elegant experimental method, was conducting an investigation of sound fields, clarifying all the subtleties of the diffraction pattern in the field of a sound radiator. Several works devoted to the study of the regime of short-wave oscillations made it possible to reduce the wavelength considerably, to apply the apparatus to the measurement of dielectric constants of liquids in the range of decimeter waves, to establish certain interesting regularities in the distribution of regions of oscillation that had not previously been noticed, and also to note peculiar types of characteristic surfaces of tubes.

Far from being alien to the demands of practice and technology, K. A. constantly maintained the closest and most active connection with a whole series of scientific-research institutions and industrial-economic organizations, not forgetting the practical benefit that the work of the Physical Institute could bring them. The rapidly developing field of radio engineering and methods of electrical measurements absorbed a substantial share of K. A.’s attention, and both by himself and under his direction in

A large number of constructive calculations and technical tests in these areas were carried out in the laboratory, and with his own closest participation his students, for the first time in the USSR, conducted a series of serious experiments to develop the simplest method and apparatus for electrothermometric and signaling devices; the latter line of work has now led to the organization of the corresponding production and to the possibility of freeing ourselves in this respect from dependence on imports.

K. A. always treated questions of teaching with great love and attention, striving to bring the work of the student laboratory and the demonstration section of the department up to the proper level, taking a lively interest in everything that concerned this, and himself constantly participating in the setting up or review of some new laboratory problem or new demonstration experiment. By 1926 the physics practicum, in the number and seriousness of its tasks, could be regarded as one of the best university laboratories.

In 1930 K. A. organized a radio-engineering laboratory at Saratov University.

In the last years of his life (1929–1932) K. A. devoted much attention and energy to literary work. He compiled the textbook Physical Foundations of Radio Engineering and translated in exemplary fashion Pohl’s brilliant book Introduction to Mechanics and Acoustics. His last literary work was the translation of the book by Pöschl, Ewald, and Prandtl, Physics of Elastic and Liquid Bodies, which he was completing when already gravely ill.

Throughout all his vigorous, many-sided activity, K. A. lived the life of the institute, was interested in every detail of that life, and one cannot pass over in silence his invariably friendly attitude toward every member of the laboratory staff and his solicitous effort to provide their scientific work with the necessary conditions—conditions to which, unfortunately, so little attention is sometimes paid.

Death cut short, with a cruel blow, this tense and full life of a great scholar and talented organizer, but in the hearts of all who knew Konstantin Aleksandrovich closely there will forever remain the bright memory of a dear teacher and comrade, of dear “Uncle Kostya.”

From the research laboratory of the Physical Institute, during the period from 1920 to 1931, about 40 scientific works were published, carried out both by him personally and by his students and collaborators. Below is given the complete list of K. A. Leont’ev’s works.

LIST OF SCIENTIFIC WORKS OF K. A. LEONTIEV

A. Scientific investigations

1. On the jump in temperature at the boundary between a gas and an absorbing wall. “Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society,” 1913.

2. Calculation and design of a mercury thermometer. “Proceedings of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union,” 1913.

3. A distillation apparatus for mercury.

4. Spectral distribution of the sensitivity of Becquerel’s photovoltaic element. Journal “Kultura,” Saratov, 1922.

5. On the theory of the contact detector. “Scientific Notes of Saratov State University,” vol. 1, 1923.

6. Experimental study of the diffraction of sound. “Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society,” 1925.

7. Investigation of the accuracy of sound ranging from impacts.

8. Investigation of the accuracy of sound ranging with continuous sound in the Military Engineering Administration and the Department of Special Works.

The last two works were carried out in the Department of Special Works of the State Physico-Technical Institute and are not subject to publication.

B. Popular-scientific articles, translations, and textbooks

1. Translation of the book by Phillips, Radiation. Moscow, 1915.

2. Translation of the book by Soddy, Matter and Energy. Moscow, 1915.

3. The heat capacity of a solid body and the atomic structure of energy. Journal “Priroda.” Moscow, 1915.

4. Temperature and its measurement. 1st ed. 1920, 2nd ed. 1922. Moscow.

5. Physical foundations of radio engineering. Moscow, GTTI, 1932.

6. Translation of the book by R. Pohl, Introduction to Mechanics and Acoustics. Moscow, GTTI, 1932.

7. Translation of the book by Peschl, Ewald, Prandtl, Physics of Elastic and Liquid Bodies. GTTI, Moscow, 1932 (in press).

8. A brief report on the works of the Physical Institute of Saratov University, carried out under the direction of K. A. Leontiev, is available in “Reports on Scientific and Technical Works in the Republic,” p. 8, issue XIII, 1924, Leningrad, publication of the Scientific-Technical Section of the Supreme Council of the National Economy.

P. V. Golubkov.