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Vladimir Ignatowski

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Vladimir Sergeyevitch Ignatowski, or Waldemar Sergius von Ignatowski, or Ignatowsky (* March 8/20, 1875 in Tbilisi, Georgia; † January 13, 1942 in Leningrad), was a Russian physicist.

Life and work

Ignatowski graduated in 1906 in Saint Petersburg. From 1906-1908 he continued to study at the University of Giessen, with his dissertation in 1909. From 1911-1914 he taught at the Higher Technical School in Berlin.[1] Afterwards he worked for different institutions in the soviet union. Then he became a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reported in his book The Gulag Archipelago, that Ignatowski was put under arrest by soviet officials, who raised absurd allegations against him. It was claimed that Ignatowski was recruited by the German secret service in 1909, not to spy in the next war (World War I), but to spy in the "war after the next war" (World War II). So Ignatowski was executed in 1942 in Leningrad.[2]

Ignatowski wrote some papers on special relativity (SR). In 1910 he was to first who tried to derive the Lorentz transformation by group theory and without the postulate of the constancy of the speed of light. According to Wolfgang Pauli and Miller, Ignatowski was unable to identify the invariant speed in their transformation with the speed of light, therefore they claimed that both postulates are needed to derive the Lorentz transformation. However, others continued the attempts to derive special relativity without the light postulate. He also investigated the status of rigid bodies within SR, and (erroneously) concluded that velocities greater than the speed of light are possible.[3] He also formulated a relativistic theory of hydrodynamics, which was discussed by Pauli.

Ignatowski is also known for his work in the field of optics, whereby he founded the only optical-mechanical facility in the Soviet Union.[2]

References

  1. ^ Thomas F. Glick, ed., The Comparative Reception of Relativity (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987), ISBN 90-277-2498-9.
  2. ^ a b Solschenizyn, 1973, The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2
  3. ^ Miller, A.I. (1981). Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Emergence (1905) and early interpretation (1905–1911). Reading: Addison–Wesley. ISBN 0-201-04679-2.

Publications

  • Ignatowsky, W. v. (1910). "Einige allgemeine Bemerkungen über das Relativitätsprinzip". Physikalische Zeitschrift. 11: 972–976.
  • Ignatowsky, W. v. (1911). "Zur Elastizitätstheorie vom Standpunkt des Relativitätsprinzips". Physikalische Zeitschrift. 12: 164–169.
  • Ignatowsky, W. v. (1911). "Über Überlichtgeschwindigkeit in der Relativitätstheorie". Physikalische Zeitschrift. 12: 776–778.

See also

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