Leonid Kirensky

Leonid Vasilyevich Kirensky (Russian: Леонид Васильевич Киренский; April 7, 1909 in Amga, Russian Empire – November 3, 1969 in Moscow, Soviet Union), whose name was also written as Leonid Vasil'evich Kirenskii, was a Soviet physicist and university professor.

When Kirensky graduated from secondary school in Yakutsk in 1927 and failed the entrance examination at the Moscow Mining Institute, he began the difficult work of teaching physics and mathematics at the Russian Model Experimental School in Yakutsk.

He was a student of Nikolay Sergeyevich Akulov [ru; de] and in 1937 published his first scientific work on the temperature dependence of the magnetization curve.

In 1939 he defended his candidate dissertation at the MSU on the magnetocaloric effect in the rotation of a ferromagnetic crystal in a magnetic field.

In 1956 Kirensky organized the Institute of Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (AN-SSSR, since 1991 Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN)) in Krasnoyarsk, which he had founded after a long effort, and was its director until 1969, when his student Ivan Terskov [ru; de] became his successor.

His funerary monument, crafted by N. A. Silis, Vladimir Sergeyevich Lemport and L. A. Sokolov, was erected in 1974.