The Nobel Prize–winning Soviet physicist who co-invented the tokamak concept with Andrei Sakharov and provided the theoretical explanation of Cherenkov radiation.
Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was born in Vladivostok, Russian Empire. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1918 and became a professor there in 1930. From 1934 until his death he headed the Theoretical Division at the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute (FIAN).[1]
In 1950–1951, while at Arzamas-16, Tamm and his doctoral student Andrei Sakharov jointly formulated the principles of magnetic confinement in a toroidal chamber with magnetic coils — the device later named the tokamak. Tamm supervised the theoretical framework while Sakharov originated the core magnetic geometry.[2]
In 1937, Tamm and Ilya Frank provided the theoretical explanation for the radiation Pavel Cherenkov had observed in 1934 — electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle moves faster than the phase velocity of light in a medium. All three shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics.[3]
Tamm trained a generation of Soviet theoretical physicists at FIAN. His contributions span nuclear forces, solid-state physics (Tamm surface states), and quantum field theory. The tokamak concept he co-invented now underpins the ITER project and the majority of the world’s fusion programs.[4]