Pyotr Lukirsky

Pyotr Ivanovich Lukirsky (Russian: Пётр Иванович Лукирский; 13 December 1894 – 16 November 1954) was a Soviet physicist who specialized in experimental physics in radiation and optics.

He was educated at Novgorod where the family moved and in 1912 he joined St. Petersburg University and graduated in 1915.

[1] In 1918 he became a fellow at the physics institute founded by Ioffe and began to work on electron scattering from the surface of liquid mercury.

In 1938 he was arrested on charges of "fascist" activities by the NKVD (as part of Stalin's Great Purge which targeted a number of other physicists including Pyotr Kapitsa and Matvei Bronstein.

[4]) and sent to a labour camp in Usollag and was rehabilitated only in 1942 after numerous petitions from his colleague physicists.