Altshuler, Semyon Alexandrovich

Semyon Alexandrovich Altshuler (born 24.09.1911) was a Soviet physicist and a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1976). Born in Vitebsk. He graduated from Kazan University (1932), where he worked from 1935 (professor from 1955). His research was in the field of radio spectroscopy and paramagnetism, and in particular of nuclear magnetism. In 1934, together with I. E. Tamm, he suggested that the neutron has a magnetic moment and correctly estimated the sign and the magnitude of that moment. In 1948, together with B. M. Kozyrev and S. G. Salikhov, he detected the influence of hyperfine magnetic interactions on electron paramagnetic resonance spectra. He predicted acoustic paramagnetic resonance and gave its theory (1952). He proposed a method of obtaining ultralow temperatures based on the adiabatic demagnetisation of the nuclear spins of Van Vleck paramagnets. Together with others he used Mandelstam-Brillouin scattering of light to study the effects of the narrow phonon “throat” and of the phonon “bottleneck” in paramagnetic crystals.