Valery Pokrovsky

Valery Pokrovsky (born 1931) is a Russian physicist. He is a member ofthe Landau Institute in Chernogolovka near
Moscow in Russia and a professor for Theoretical Physics at Texas A&M University.

After having received his master degree from Kharkov University, Ukraine, in 1953.Valery Pokrovsky defended his PhD thesis at Tomsk University in 1957. Until1966 he was a scientist at the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1966he was invited to the newly founded Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He also was employed as a professor at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1992 hebecame a professor of Physics at Texas A&M University.

His areas of research are Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Physics, and Condensed Matter theory. He ist best known for his pioneering and fundamental contributions to modern theory of phase transitions, together with Alexander Patashinsky, in 1965, as well as theanalysis of transformations between commensurate and incommensurate superstructures in two-dimensional systems, the "Pokrovsky-Talapov transition".

Valery Pokrovsky received for his outstanding work several awards, including the Landau Prize of the
Soviet Academy of Science in 1984, the Humboldt Prize in 2000, and the Lars Onsager Prize of the American Physical Society in 2005.

External link

* [http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/prizerecipient.cfm?name=Valery%20L%20Pokrovsky&year=2005 Onsager Prize citation with bibliography]