Sergei Vavilov: luminary of Russian physics

摘要

Sergei Vavilov was born in Moscow in 1891. His father, a prosperous textile merchant, gave a good education to his two sons and hoped they would inherit and continue his business. However, Sergei and his elder brother Nikolai both decided to become scientists. Nikolai chose biology, while in 1909 Sergei entered the Department of Physics and Mathematics at Moscow University. As a second-year student he started work in the laboratory of Pyotr Mikolaevich Lebedev (1866 -1912), who was famous for his experiments on the pressure of light on solids and gases. Vavilov became a great admirer of Lebedev's style of work - an interest in the fundamental problems of physics blended with careful experiments.