Vsevolod Frederiks

Who was Vsevolod Frederiks?

Vsevolod Konstantinovich Frederiks was a Russian/Soviet physicist. His primary contribution to physics was in the field of liquid crystals. The Frederiks transition was named after him.

After high school Frederiks attended Geneva University and for one semester attended the lectures of Paul Langevin in Paris. After defending his thesis and obtaining his PhD, Fredericks decided to continue his studies at Göttingen University. He was there for more than eight years, and with the outbreak of World War I he became a civil prisoner. During that period he became personal assistant to David Hilbert.

In the summer of 1918 Frederiks returned to Russia, and worked at the Institute of Physics and Biophysics in Moscow. In 1919 he became a lecturer at the University of Petrograd.

He was arrested by the NKVD in 1937, and although released before the war he died before reaching home.