Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz (born 21.02.1915) is a Soviet theoretical physicist and an academician (1979; corresponding member 1966). He was born in Kharkov. He graduated from the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute (1933). In 1933—38 he worked at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute, and from 1939 at the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
His work is in the field of solid-state physics, the theory of gravitation and cosmology. Together with L. D. Landau he constructed in 1935 the theory of domains in ferromagnets and gave the equation of motion of the magnetic moment (the Landau — Lifshitz equation). In the theory of phase transitions he established (1941) a criterion that made it possible to give a complete classification of the possible transitions of the second kind (the Lifshitz criterion). He developed the theory of the molecular forces acting between condensed bodies (1954). He constructed the theory of instabilities in the expanding Universe (1946), and together with I. M. Khalatnikov and V. A. Belinsky he found the general cosmological solution of the Einstein equations with a singularity in time (1970—72). Together with L. D. Landau he wrote the “Course of Theoretical Physics”, which became a classic (the Lenin Prize, 1962).
USSR State Prize (1954). The M. V. Lomonosov (1958) and L. D. Landau (1974) prizes.