Evgeny Lifshitz

• 1. Second of Forty-Three

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  Evgeny Lifshitz was the second of only 43 people ever to pass Lev Landau's Theoretical Minimum examination. Born on the 21st of February 1915 in Kharkov, Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire, Lifshitz came from a Jewish family. The city is now known as Kharkiv, Ukraine. His brother Ilya was also a physicist.

  Lifshitz died on the 29th of October 1985. In the decades between, he co-authored a textbook series with Landau and helped formulate a conjecture about singularities in general relativity. He also made a precise calculation in quantum electrodynamics. How much a physicist trained to Landau's level could accomplish across those different areas is the question his career answered.

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• 2. The Complete Physics

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  The Course of Theoretical Physics, co-authored by Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz, set out to provide a graduate-level introduction to the entire field of physics. That ambition distinguished it from most advanced textbook series of its era, which focused on individual disciplines.

  Lev Landau and Lifshitz aimed not at a single branch of physics but at all of it. The series was designed to carry a graduate student across the full range of the discipline. That comprehensive scope was the project's defining characteristic.

  The Course of Theoretical Physics is still considered invaluable and continues to be widely used. Lifshitz's research in general relativity, running alongside the textbook work, was pressing toward a problem no introductory series could settle.

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• 3. An Unresolved Conjecture

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  The BKL conjecture, which Lifshitz co-authored, addresses the nature of a generic curvature singularity in general relativity. Physicists have widely regarded it as one of the most important open problems in classical gravitation. That standing has held for decades.

  The word "generic" defines the conjecture's ambition. Rather than describing a particular simplified singularity, it asks what a curvature singularity looks like in the most general possible case. That generality is what makes the problem difficult, and what has kept it open.

  The BKL conjecture remains unresolved. Researchers in classical gravitation continue to work on the problem it raised. Lifshitz's contributions to quantum electrodynamics would earn his name a permanent place in the technical vocabulary of physics.

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• 4. Casimir and the Lifshitz Point

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  Lifshitz's contributions to quantum electrodynamics, the theory describing how light and charged particles interact, were counted among his most invaluable by his peers. Chief among them was his calculation of the Casimir force in an arbitrary macroscopic configuration of metals and dielectrics.

  The phrase "arbitrary macroscopic configuration" marks the scope of what Lifshitz achieved. He solved the problem not for a single idealized geometry but for any configuration of those materials. That generality was what distinguished the result.

  Since 1975, a special multicritical point in physics has carried his name: the Lifshitz point. The designation was made during his lifetime. The Lifshitz point remains part of the active vocabulary of physics, appearing in technical contexts wherever that feature of matter arises.

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