George Gamow - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Gamow was born in the city of Odessa, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine) to mixed Russian-Ukrainian parents. His father taught Russian language and literature in high school, and his mother taught geography and history at a school for girls. In addition to Russian, Gamow learned to speak some French from his mother, and German from a tutor. Gamow did not learn fluent English until his college years and later. Most of his early publications were in German or Russian, but he later switched to writing in English for both technical papers and for the lay audience.

He was educated at the Novorossiya University in Odessa (1922–23) and at the University of Leningrad (1923–1929). Gamow studied under Alexander Friedmann for some time in Leningrad, until Friedmann's early death in 1925. He aspired to do his doctoral thesis under Friedmann, but had to change dissertation advisors. At the University, Gamow made friends with three other students of theoretical physics, Lev Landau, Dmitri Ivanenko, and Matvey Bronshtein (who was later arrested in 1937 and executed in 1938 by the Soviet regime). The four formed a group known as the Three Musketeers which met to discuss and analyze the ground-breaking papers on quantum mechanics published during those years. He later used the same phrase to describe the Alpher, Herman, and Gamow "group."

On graduation, he worked on quantum theory in Göttingen, where his research into the atomic nucleus provided the basis for his doctorate. He then worked at the Theoretical Physics Institute of the University of Copenhagen, from 1928 to 1931, with a break to work with Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. He continued to study the atomic nucleus (proposing the "liquid drop" model), but also worked on stellar physics with Robert Atkinson and Fritz Houtermans.

In 1931 Gamow was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at age 28 — one of the youngest in the history of this organization. During the period 1931-1933, George Gamow worked in the Physical Department of the Radium Institute (Leningrad) headed by Vitaly Khlopin. Under the guidance and direct participation of Igor Kurchatov, Lev Mysovskii and George Gamow, Europe's first cyclotron was designed. In 1932, George Gamow and Lev Mysovskii submitted a draft design for consideration by the Academic Council of the Radium Institute, which approved it. The cyclotron was not completed until 1937.