Alexander Genrikhovich Goldman (3.02.1884—30.12.1971) was a Soviet physicist and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1929). He was born in Warsaw. He graduated from the universities of Leipzig (1908) and Kiev (1909). In 1914—18 he worked in Petrograd at the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures and taught at the Polytechnic Institute. In 1918 —30 he was at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute (professor from 1921) and in 1929 —38 professor at Kiev University.
In 1923 he organised the Kiev Research Chair of Physics and was its head until it was transformed in 1929 into the Kiev Research Institute of Physics (now the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR). In 1929 —38 he was director of that institute, in 1944 —52 professor at the Pedagogical Institute in Vologda, in 1952 — 56 in Balashov and in 1956 in Rostov-on-Don. From 1959 he was head of a laboratory at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
His work was in the physics of dielectrics and semiconductors, in electroluminescence and in the history of physics. He studied the photogalvanic effect, processes in solid-state photocells, rectification phenomena in semiconductors and at a metal — semiconductor contact, and the regularities of the barrier-layer effect. He carried out research on the infrared luminescence of cuprous oxide and on the electroluminescence of certain complex compounds; in particular he obtained and studied bulk electroluminescence accompanied by the emission of “hot” electrons.
He played a large part in organising physics research in the Ukrainian SSR.