Pavel Pavlovich Kobeko (02.06.1897-06.01.1954) was a Soviet physicist and physical chemist.
A corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1943). He was born in Vilnius. He graduated from the Agricultural Institute in the town of Gorki, Smolensk Region (1924). In 1924-52 he worked at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute and from 1952 at the Institute of High-Molecular Compounds of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and at the same time from 1930 he taught at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (professor from 1935, head of a department from 1944).
His research was in the fields of the physics of dielectrics, ferroelectricity, and the physics and physical chemistry of amorphous bodies, including high-molecular compounds. In 1930 — 31, together with I. V. Kurchatov, he carried out studies of the properties of Rochelle salt which led to the discovery of a new class of substances — the ferroelectrics; he built up a physical picture of the phenomenon of ferroelectricity and proved the existence of spontaneous polarisation.
He made a substantial contribution to clarifying the nature of the amorphous state. He was the first to introduce a kinetic treatment of amorphous bodies, showed that in supercooled liquids, glasses and polymers all processes obey the same relaxation laws, proved that the decisive part in determining how an amorphous body responds to external actions is played by their duration, and clarified the essential nature of the solidification of amorphous systems. He studied the kinetics of polymerisation and depolymerisation, the connection between the chemical structure of glasses and polymers and their physical properties, the rates of molecular processes in liquids over a wide range of temperatures and pressures, and the nature of brittle fracture and of the strength of solids, polymers in particular. Together with A. P. Alexandrov he developed a method of producing frost-resistant rubbers. He laid the foundations of the physics of the amorphous state in the USSR.