Antonina Fedorovna Prikhodko ( born 26.04.1906) — Soviet experimental physicist,
academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1964). Born in Pyatigorsk. Graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic
Institute (1930). In 1930-41 she worked at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute,
in 1941—44 —at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. From 1944 — head of the department of crystal physics of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (in 1965 — 70 — director).
Her work was in the fields of low-temperature solid-state spectroscopy and the optics of molecular crystals. Together with I. V. Obreimov she detected (1930—41) the discrete structure of the spectra of many molecular crystals at low temperatures. She established the main regularities of the absorption and emission of light by organic crystals and carried out the first low-temperature measurements of the normal and anomalous dispersion of light in them. She detected (1946 — 48) and studied purely crystalline collective absorption of light in molecular crystals, which testifies to the existence in them of excitons, predicted in 1931 by Ya. I. Frenkel. She carried out a large series of studies of the absorption spectra of aromatic crystals. She clarified the role of defects, lattice imperfections and lattice deformations, which distinguish real crystals from ideal ones, established connections between the spectra and the structure of crystals and a number of phase transformations in molecular crystals, and detected photoreactions at low temperatures, intrinsic exciton luminescence, localised excitons and others. With A. S. Davydov she created the physics of the exciton states of molecular crystals. She carried out extensive studies of cryocrystals, which led to the discovery of bi- and polyexcitons.
Hero of Socialist Labour (1976). Lenin Prize (1966), State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR (1977). She founded a school of physicists (V. V. Eremenko, M. S. Brodin, M. T. Shpak, V. L. Broude, M. S. Soskin and others).