Boris Ieremiyevich Verkin (born 8.08.1919) is a Soviet physicist and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1972). He was born in Kharkov. He graduated from Kharkov University (1940) and began working at the Physico-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. After the war, in 1946—60, he worked at the same institute. Since 1960 he has been director of the Physico-Technical Institute of Low Temperatures of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
His work concerned low-temperature physics and engineering, in particular the study of the electronic properties of metals, superconductivity, low-temperature materials science, cryogenic medicine and biology,
the physics of cryogenic liquids, and superconducting magnet systems and devices. Together with B. G. Lazarev he discovered and studied (1949 — 51) oscillations of the magnetic susceptibility in a wide range of metals, showing that such oscillations are common to all metals. He contributed to the study of the nature of the magnetic properties of metals and to the solution of the problem of the electron energy spectrum of metals. He developed (1967 — 75) the method of tunnelling spectroscopy. He proved that RNA and DNA molecules can be crystallised, proposed a new method of studying the intermolecular interactions of macromolecules — field mass spectroscopy — and studied the tunnelling spectra of a number of biological molecules. He obtained a number of new results in cryogenic and space materials science. He solved the problem of modelling the behaviour of a liquid under weightlessness. Together with his co-workers he built the country's first powerful superconducting electrical machines, passive cooling systems with a solid coolant, and a number of superconducting devices.
USSR State Prize (1978). State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR (1973).