Grigory Samuilovich Landsberg (22.01.1890—2.02.1957) was a Soviet physicist and an academician (1946; corresponding member 1932). He was born in Vologda. He graduated from Moscow University (1913) and was retained there to prepare for a professorship. In 1918 — 20 he worked at the Omsk Agricultural Institute, and in 1920—23 at the Institute of Physics and Biophysics (Moscow). In 1923—45 and 1947 —51 he was at Moscow University (professor from 1923) and at the same time, from 1934, at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he headed the Optical Laboratory.
In 1951—57 he was professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
His research concerned physical optics, molecular physics and applied spectroscopy. In 1927 he proved the existence of molecular scattering in quartz crystals; in 1928, together with L. I. Mandelstam (independently of and somewhat earlier than C. Raman and K. S. Krishnan), he discovered Raman scattering of light in crystals; in 1930 he detected the presence of fine structure in the Rayleigh line (the study of Rayleigh scattering was one of the main lines of Landsberg's research); and in 1931 he discovered selective scattering of light. He was the first to isolate truly molecular scattering of light in solids.
He made a considerable contribution to the development of spectroscopy, to the creation of spectroscopic instruments (the steeloscope and others) and to methods of spectroscopic research. For his work on spectral analysis he was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1941. He is widely known as the author of the textbooks “Optics” and the three-volume “Elementary Textbook of Physics”, which have gone through many editions.
He founded a scientific school.