Leopold Infeld (20.08.1898-15.01.1968) was a Polish theoretical physicist and a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1952). He was born in Kraków. He graduated from the University of Kraków (1921) and worked as a secondary-school teacher. In 1929 —36 he was senior assistant at the University of Lvov (in 1933 — 34 he held a scholarship at Cambridge). In 1936—38 he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he collaborated with A. Einstein, and from 1939 he was professor at the University of Toronto (Canada). After returning to Poland (1950) he headed the department of theoretical physics at the University of Warsaw, and from 1951 he was also director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.
His research was in the field of general relativity and of classical, relativistic and quantum field theory. Together with M. Born he constructed (1934) a phenomenological model of classical electrodynamics that removes the infinite energy of a point charge (the Born — Infeld theory). Together with A. Einstein and B. Hoffmann he derived the equations of motion of bodies in general relativity from the field equations and constructed a satisfactory theory of gravitating bodies in a gravitational field (the Einstein — Infeld — Hoffmann theory).
He was also known as a writer on science and as an author. His book “The Evolution of Physics”, written jointly with A. Einstein, became widely popular, ran to many editions and was translated into many languages of the world. He was the author of several works of fiction, in particular a story about the French mathematician, “E. Galois — the Chosen of the Gods”.
A member of many academies of sciences. He created a school of theoretical physicists.