Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz (; February 21 1915 – October 29 1985) was a leading Soviet physicist.

(Some commonly encountered alternative transliterations of his names include Yevgeny or Evgenii and Lifshits.)

Lifshitz is well known in general relativity for coauthoring the BKL conjecture concerning the nature of a generic curvature singularity. As of 2006, this is widely regarded as one of the most important open problems in the subject of classical gravitation.

With Lev Landau, Lifshitz co-authored an ambitious series of physics textbooks, in which the two aimed to provide a graduate-level introduction to the entire field of physics. These books are still considered invaluable and continue to be widely used. Lifshitz was the second of only 43 people ever to pass Landau's "Theoretical Minimum" examination.

The wife of Lev Landau strongly criticized his scientific abilities, hinting at how much of his work was done by himself, and how much by Landau. (Of their textbooks, the joke is made, "Not one word of Landau, not one thought of Lifshitz.")

External links

• List of books published by Lifshitz, from Amazon.

References

• The paper introducing the BKL conjecture.

• Vol. 1 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Vol. 2 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Vol. 3 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Vol. 3 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Vol. 4 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

• Vol. 10 of the Course of Theoretical Physics.

1915 births | 1985 deaths | Soviet physicists | Contributors to general relativity | Jewish scientists

Jewgeni Michailowitsch Lifschitz | エフゲニー・リフシッツ | Лифшиц, Евгений Михайлович | Jevgenij Mihajlovič Lifšic