Yuriy Rumer - Biography

Biography

Yurij Rumer was born in Moscow into a merchant family. His brother Osip Rumer was a well-known translator, poet and polyglot. After graduating from non-classical secondary school in 1918 he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University. During an internship at the University of Göttingen in Germany he worked as an assistant of Max Born. There he investigated the basics of quantum chemistry in cooperation with Walter Heitler and discovered the molecule canonical structure.

After returning to Moscow in September, 1932, he became an associate professor at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University and got a professor position in January, 1933. He was recommended for this position by Erwin Schrödinger and Leonid Mandelstam. At MSU Professor Rumer supervised such notable scientists as Volkenshtein, Kuznetsov, and Kovner. He lectured at MSU from 1932 to 1937 and worked as a scientist at the Lebedev Physical Institute from 1935 to 1938.

Rumer was arrested on the Arbat Street in 1938 as an accomplice of the public enemy Landau when he was going to a birthday party. He was arrested together with Lev Landau and Moisey Korets. First he worked on plane flutter and wobble problems in a Sharashka situated at an Omsk suburb. Later in 1946 he was transferred to Taganrog where he worked on a project of a new transport aircraft which was headed by Robert Bartini.

After serving the complete term in accord with the law he was exiled to Yeniseysk. There he worked at a teachers' training college as a professor of physics and mathematics. Rumer moved to Novosibirsk in 1950, where he made both ends meet owing to casual earnings for two years. He could not get a job at universities and research institutions because of his convict status. When his exile term ended, he was accepted for a senior staff scientist at the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In the end of 1954 he was informed by the Military Board of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union that his case was reconsidered and the sentence was waived due to the newly-discovered evidence.

Rumer lectured at the Novosibirsk teachers' training institute, held a position of the head of the Theoretical Physics Department at the East-Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1953 to 1957. In 1957 he was appointed the director of the Radio Physics and Radio Electronics Institute which was the first physical institute in Novosobirsk. The institute was merged with the Semiconductor Physics Institute in 1964. Rumer worked at the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics for some time and later at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics. He carried out educational work at Novosibirsk State University for almost 20 years and retired in 1972. Rumer died on February 1, 1985 in Akademgorodok.