(18.03.1938 – 25.07.2011)

Doctor of Sciences,

Professor,

Full Member (Academician) of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,

Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine

Head of the Department of Microcontact Spectroscopy 1970 - 2011

Igor Kondratievich Yanson was born in Kharkov (Ukraine) on March 18, 1938. In 1961 he graduated with honors from the Department of Radiophysics of Kharkov State University and in 1963 he graduated with honors from  Leningrad State Conservatoire. In 1961-1965 he was a postgraduate student at the Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (ILTPE NASU). Since 1964 I.K.Yanson worked in ILTPE, where during 1970-2011 he headed the Department of Point-Contact Spectroscopy. In 1966 he defended his Candidate's (PhD) thesis. I. K. Yanson was awarded his doctorate (D.Sc.) in 1975 and, three years later, he became a professor. I.K. Yanson was elected a Corresponding Member in 1979, and a Full Member of NAS of Ukraine in 1992. In 2005 I. K. Yanson was given the rank of the "Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine".

I.K. Yanson is a well-known physist in the field of fundamental research of electronic properties of metals, superconductivity, magnetism and biophysics. I.K.Yanson was the first to observe electromagnetic radiation from superconducting tunnel junctions (1964), which was direct evidence for the existence of a non-stationary Josephson effect. His another important achievement was the discovery of Point-contact spectroscopy method (1974), which ranks high among the spectroscopic methods in physics of solids and has became a powerful tool of investigating the interaction of conduction electrons with the different types of quasiparticle excitations in metallic systems. I.K.Yanson has made a notable contribution to nanophysics: his research of atomic-size contacts has allowed observation conductivity quantization in 3D structures. His many-sided talent and physical intuition has led I. K. Yanson to work out new experimental approaches and methods of biophysical investigations. They include: field emission vacuum mass-spectroscopy of bond energy between the nitrous bases of nucleic acids in a vacuum which code genetic information in DNA, and the quartz resonator method studying the enthalpy in molecular crystals of nitrous bases and their derivatives. The works of I. K. Yanson in the field of inelastic tunnel spectroscopy have gained wide-spread recognition.

I.K.Yanson's outstanding contribution to science have been awarded with many honors such as the Youth Prize in Science and Technics (1967), the Ukrainian State Prize in Science and Technology  (1980), the "Hewlett-Packard" European Physical Society Prize in solid state physics for discovery and exploitation of point-contact spectroscopy in metals (1987), The Humboldt Research Award (1995), the B.Verkin Prize of National Academy of Science of Ukraine (2006), Lise Meitner Prize, Sweden (2008).