Leonid Vikentyevich Volodko (2.1.1928 - 29.09.1978) was a Soviet experimental physicist and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1977). He was born in the village of Borovoye, Minsk Region. He graduated from Byelorussian University (1953), where he worked (head of a department from 1963 and vice-rector from 1967).
His main work was in the field of molecular spectroscopy (the study of how intermolecular and intramolecular interactions contribute to the spectroscopic properties of substances). He obtained a number of important results on the influence of intermolecular interaction on the dichroism, the polarisation and the kinetics of the luminescence of crystals of uranyl compounds; on the dynamic scattering of light, the optical activity and the infrared dichroism of liquid crystals; on the formation of spatial structures and the electrical conductivity of the products of the polycondensation of phenols; and on charge transfer in the respiratory chain of the cells of living organisms. He developed methods and instruments for monitoring the strain in the active elements and the Q-switches of solid-state lasers and for the statistical recording of luminescence kinetics in the nanosecond range, and liquid-crystal indicators of the distribution of laser radiation in the infrared.
State Prize of the Byelorussian SSR (1974).