Dmitri Dmitriyevich Ivanenko (born 29.07.1904) was a Soviet theoretical physicist and a Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He was born in Poltava. He graduated from Leningrad University (1927). He worked at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. In 1929 —31 he was head of the theoretical department of the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute and then worked at higher educational institutions in Leningrad, Tomsk, Sverdlovsk and Kiev. From 1943 he was professor at Moscow University.
His research was in the field of quantum field theory, the theory of the nucleus, synchrotron radiation, unified field theory, the theory of gravitation and the history of physics. Together with V. A. Fock, having generalised the Dirac equation to the case of gravitation, he developed the theory of the parallel transport of spinors (1929), and with V. A. Ambartsumian he developed the theory of discrete space-time (1930). In 1932 he established the proton–neutron model of the nucleus, treating the neutron as an elementary particle, and pointed out that in beta decay the electron is created in the same way as a photon. Together with E. N. Gapon he began work on the shells of protons and neutrons in nuclei. With I. E. Tamm he showed the possibility of interaction through particles possessing rest mass and laid the foundations of the first field-theoretic, non-phenomenological theory of pair (electron–neutrino) nuclear forces (1934). Together with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk he predicted (1944) the synchrotron radiation emitted by relativistic electrons in magnetic fields, and with A. A. Sokolov he developed its theory (USSR State Prize, 1950). He established (1938) the nonlinear spinor equation. He worked on a nonlinear unified theory that takes quarks and subquarks into account. He developed a gauge theory of gravitation that takes account of torsion as well as curvature. His pupils were V. I. Mamasakhlisov, M. M. Mirianashvili, A. M. Brodsky, N. Guliev, D. F. Kurdelaidze, V. V. Rachinsky, V. I. Rodichev, A. A. Sokolov and others.