Sergei Vonsovsky

Sergei Vasilyevich Vonsovsky (also spelled as Vonsovskii or Vonsovskiy, Russian: Сергей Васильевич Вонсовский; August 20, 1910 – August 11, 1998) was a prominent Soviet and Russian physicist.

Sergei Vonsovsky was born in 1910 in Tashkent. In 1932 he graduated from the Leningrad University. In 1932 he moved to Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) and started working at the Ural Physicotechical Institute, later – at the Metals Physics Institute of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1943 he defended his second thesis and received the highest scientific degree of Doctor of Science (Russian degree called doctor nauk). From 1947 he also kept a professorship at the chair of theoretical physics at the department of physics of the Ural State University. Since 1971 to 1985 he was the director of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Sergei Vonsovsky led researches in the field of metal physics studying the transition metals and the fusions. He created the fusions ferromagnetism theory and developed the theory of magnetic anisotropy. He also worked at the field of the transition metals and fusions superconductivity in particular he studied the problem of simultaneity of ferromagnetism and paramagnetism.

He was the founder of the Ural scientific school in ferromagnetism and metals physics.

Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences instituted Vonsovsky Gold Medal in his honour.

• Full member (academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1966)
• Hero of Socialist Labour (1969)
• Foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences
• Foreign corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences
• State Prize of USSR (1975, 1982)
• Vavilov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1982)
• Three Orders of Lenin
• Order of the Red Star
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour
• Demidov Prize (1993)
• Honorary citizen of Yekaterinburg

One of the streets of Yekaterinburg is called after academician Vonsovsky. The main scientific award of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is called the Vonsovsky Gold Medal. In Yekaterinburg you may also find a monument to Sergei Vonsovsky.

• S. V. Vonsovsky & Y. S. Shur, Ferromagnetism (Moscow, 1948)
• S. V. Vonsovskii, Ferromagnetic Resonance (Pergamon: Oxford, 1966)
• S. V. Vonsovsky, Magnetism (Wiley, 1974), in two volumes
• S. V. Vonsovsky, Magnetism of elementary particles (Moscow, 1975)
• S. V. Vonsovsky and M. I. Katsnelson, Quantum Solid State Physics (1989)