Igor Tamm

Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (Russian И́горь Евге́ньевич Та́мм) (July 8, 1895 – April 12, 1971) was a Soviet physicist, mathematician and a Nobel laureate. Tamm was born in Vladivostok, Russian Empire (now Russia) in a Russian-German family (his grandfather emigrated from Thuringia), studied at the grammar school in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad, Ukraine). In 1913-1914 he studied at the University of Edinburgh together with his gymnasium school friend B... more

Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (Russian И́горь Евге́ньевич Та́мм) (July 8, 1895 – April 12, 1971) was a Soviet physicist, mathematician and a Nobel laureate. Tamm was born in Vladivostok, Russian Empire (now Russia) in a Russian-German family (his grandfather emigrated from Thuringia), studied at the grammar school in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad, Ukraine). In 1913-1914 he studied at the University of Edinburgh together with his gymnasium school friend Boris Hessen. He then moved to the Moscow State University from which graduated in 1918. In 1928 Igor Tamm spent a few months with Paul Ehrenfest at the University of Leiden. In 1932, Igor Tamm published a paper with his proposal of the concept of surface states. This concept is important for MOSFET physics. In 1945 he developed an approximation method for many-body physics. As Sidney Dancoff developed it independently in 1950, it is now called the Tamm-Dancoff approximation. He was the Nobel Laureate in Physics for the year 1958 together with... less