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Portrait of Vitaly L. Ginzburg
Photo: Emaus modified by Penarc, Own work · CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Prize in Physics · 2003

Vitaly L. Ginzburg

Co-wrote the theory of superconductors that explains the magnets inside MRI scanners, despite Stalin-era attacks on him as a Jew.

The Nobel citation: “for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids”
Born
October 4, 1916, Moscow, Russia
Died
November 8, 2009
Shared with
Alexei Abrikosov, Anthony J. Leggett
Affiliation at the time
P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Russia

Physics prize

2003

Shared with 2 other laureates.

Age that year

87years

Born in 1916.

Headline credited impact

600,000–2.2 millionpeople benefited

People who have benefited from MRI examinations worldwide since the early 1980s. How it was built

Sources cited

23

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • He did not start school until age 11, and later crammed three years of high-school work into three months to sit the Moscow University entrance exams.
  • His second wife, Nina, was jailed in 1944 on an invented charge of plotting to shoot Stalin from her window, and was kept out of Moscow until after Stalin died.
  • His idea to use lithium-6 as fuel was one of two key ideas behind the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. He later wrote that the bomb saved him.
  • He won the Nobel Prize at 87 for a theory he built with Lev Landau in 1950. Landau had died in 1968, and Nobel Prizes are not awarded after death.
  • He ran a Wednesday physics seminar in Moscow from the mid-1950s until 2001, closing it himself at its 1,700th meeting.

The breakthrough

The Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity (1950)

Some metals, cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero, suddenly carry electric current with no resistance at all, and they push magnetic fields out of their interior. By the 1940s physicists had equations for this, from the brothers Fritz and Heinz London, but they failed in strong magnetic fields and gave impossible answers at the boundary between normal and superconducting metal. In 1950 Ginzburg and Lev Landau built a new theory that did not need a detailed picture of the electrons. They described the superconducting state with one quantity, an 'order parameter' that acts like a wave spread through the whole metal: zero above the critical temperature, and growing as the metal gets colder. Think of a crowded dance hall. When it is warm, everyone moves at random; below a certain temperature, more and more people fall into one shared routine, and the order parameter measures how many have joined in. The theory predicted how much current and magnetic field a superconductor can take before it fails. It also produced a key number, called kappa. Ginzburg and Landau saw that materials with kappa above about 0.71 would behave differently, but every superconductor known at the time had a much lower value. In 1957 Alexei Abrikosov showed that such 'type-II' materials let magnetic field in through tiny whirlpools while staying superconducting. These are the materials used in strong superconducting magnets. In 1959 Lev Gorkov showed that the theory follows from the later microscopic theory of electron pairs.[4],[5],[6],[7],[8]

“I have never been able to even think of giving up my native people.”
Vitaly L. Ginzburg, From his 2003 Nobel autobiography, explaining why he, an atheist who knew neither Hebrew nor Yiddish, never stopped feeling Jewish.[2]

What it meant for humanity

Most people never see a superconductor, but many have lain inside one. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) needs a very strong, very steady magnetic field, and the usual way to make one is a coil of superconducting wire cooled in liquid helium. MRI is the largest commercial use of superconductivity: about 50,000 scanners are installed worldwide, most new ones are superconducting, and they perform more than 95 million scans a year. The same kind of magnet steers particle beams in accelerators. All of these magnets use type-II superconductors, which keep working in strong fields. The Ginzburg-Landau theory, and Abrikosov's extension of it, is how physicists understand and describe those materials. The Nobel committee called Abrikosov's work a breakthrough in the study of new superconducting materials, and said the reasoning behind the Ginzburg-Landau theory was so general that it is used in many other branches of physics. Its method is still used as a common language for phase transitions, the moments when matter suddenly reorganizes itself. The theory did not invent the magnet wire, which was found by experiment, but it gave engineers and scientists a clear picture of what they were working with. Ginzburg's other work was also wide: radio waves in the ionosphere, radio emission from the Sun, the origin of cosmic rays, and, with Ilya Frank, transition radiation. He also spent decades as a teacher, editor and public voice for science in Russia. His lists of the most important open problems in physics, first published in 1971, were written to widen the horizons of young physicists.

  • MRI is the largest commercial application of superconductivity; of about 4,000 MRI scanners installed each year, more than 3,000 use superconducting magnets.[18]
  • The Nobel Foundation notes that the strong magnets in today's MRI scanners are all type-II superconductors, the class of materials Abrikosov explained using the Ginzburg-Landau theory.[5]
  • The 2003 Nobel ceremony speech said the reasoning behind the Ginzburg-Landau theory was so general that it is used to gain new knowledge in many branches of physics.[6],[23]
  • He and Ilya Frank jointly drew attention to transition radiation, and his wartime work on radio waves in the ionosphere led him into radio astronomy and the study of the Sun's corona.[3],[7]
  • From 1971 he published lists of the most important open problems in physics and astrophysics, later expanded to 30 problems, written to widen young physicists' horizons.[7],[21]

Impact in numbers

Ginzburg's main legacy is a way of thinking. The Ginzburg-Landau theory gave physicists a simple, general description of superconductors that is still used to understand new materials, and its method became a common tool for studying phase transitions across physics. Through Abrikosov's extension, it is the standard account of the type-II superconductors inside MRI scanners and accelerator magnets. We record one small, low-confidence ripple claim: 0.2% of the people who have benefited from MRI, the same whole-outcome range used for Rabi, Bloch and Stern. The share is small because the magnet wire was found by experiment and the theory explains it rather than enables it. His other work, on radio waves in plasma, cosmic rays and transition radiation, and his decades of teaching and editing, cannot honestly be counted. We record no numeric harm claim. The Soviet hydrogen bombs he helped design were never used in war, and no reliable count exists of the people harmed by Soviet testing; those harms are described in words above.

Fundamental scienceHealthTechnologyEducation

Each number is the laureate’s credited share of a real-world outcome, cumulative to 2025. The whole outcome, the share of credit, and the reasoning are shown so you can check the arithmetic. Outcomes shared with other laureates are counted once on the impact page.

  • Low confidenceRippleModeledHealth

    People who have benefited from MRI examinations worldwide since the early 1980s

    600,000–2.2 million

    people benefited, credited share

    That is 0.2% of 300 million–1.1 billion people benefited since 1981.

    How this number was built

    Same whole-outcome range as the Rabi, Bloch and Stern profiles. Nobel Assembly: clinical MRI began in the early 1980s, with >60M exams in 2002; GE HealthCare: >95M scans a year. Summing gives about 2.6B (low) to 2.9B (high) exams through 2025. With 20-50% of imaging judged low-value and 2-4 scans per person: 2.6B x 0.5 / 4 = 0.3B; 2.9B x 0.8 / 2 = 1.1B. Share 0.002: MRI's strong magnets are type-II superconductors (NbTi), described by Ginzburg-Landau theory as extended by Abrikosov. But the wire was found by experiment, low-field MRI can use other magnets, and NMR physics, imaging methods and engineering carry most credit. Landau's profile makes no MRI claim. Credited: about 0.6M-2.2M people.[5],[6],[18],[19],[20],[22]

    Sources: NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences); NobelPrize.org; IOP Publishing / PubMed Central; NobelPrize.org (Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet); GE HealthCare; MDPI / PubMed Central

The double edge

Ginzburg helped the Soviet Union build the hydrogen bomb. In 1948 he joined Igor Tamm's secret group, and his proposal to use lithium-6 deuteride as fuel was one of the two key ideas behind the first Soviet thermonuclear design, tested on 12 August 1953 with a yield of about 400 kilotons. Soviet thermonuclear weapons were never used in war, but they fed the arms race, and the Semipalatinsk test site, where the 1953 bomb was exploded, put about one million people in its zone of radiation impact over 40 years. Ginzburg later said that at the time he thought he was working against a Nazi monopoly on the bomb, and admitted that the danger of Stalin holding one never crossed his mind. He was a Communist Party member from 1942 to 1991 and later wrote that he had long been blind to the regime's nature. His Nobel autobiography also contains blunt political opinions that many readers would reject.

  • Major

    Lithium fuel for the first Soviet hydrogen bomb

    In Tamm's group, Andrei Sakharov proposed a layered bomb design and Ginzburg proposed replacing heavy water with solid lithium-6 deuteride, which produces tritium inside the exploding device. Both ideas went into the RDS-6s bomb, tested on 12 August 1953 at about 400 kilotons. A later history calls lithium-6 deuteride a convenient, versatile nuclear fuel.[2],[7],[9],[10],[11]

  • Moderate

    Part of a testing program that exposed civilians

    The 1953 thermonuclear test took place at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, where 456 nuclear devices were exploded over 40 years. The official estimate is that about one million people lived in the zone of radiation impact. Ginzburg worked only on the early design ideas and was kept out of the secret weapons center.[2],[11],[17]

  • Minor

    Party loyalty and hard-edged politics

    He joined the Communist Party in 1942 and left only in 1991, later writing that he had failed for years to see the regime's true nature. In his Nobel autobiography he argued against critics of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and called for Israel and a Palestinian state to be walled off from each other, views that many would dispute.[2]

Against the odds

Ginzburg grew up in a Moscow scarred by war, revolution and hunger; his mother died of typhoid in 1920. He wrote that he did not face antisemitism when he failed to win a university place in 1933. That changed after the Second World War. After the war the Soviet state turned on so-called 'rootless cosmopolitans', and more than 70% of the people the press named in early 1949 were Jews. Ginzburg was already a target. His wife had been jailed on an invented charge of plotting against Stalin and was then banned from Moscow, and on his birthday in 1947 a national newspaper accused him of servility to the West. He listed the reasons he made a good target: a party member, married to a former prisoner, and Jewish. The same day, his promotion to professor was blocked. He believed that only his value to the hydrogen-bomb project kept him from worse. Even so, he was not allowed into the secret weapons town, and was later removed from the work. During the 1953 Doctors' Plot he feared that Jews would be deported. For decades afterwards he was often refused permission to travel abroad. In 2007, at 91, he was vilified by pro-government activists for opposing religious teaching in schools.

  • 1944

    Persecution

    His future wife, Nina Ermakova, was arrested in 1944 on an invented charge of plotting to shoot Stalin from her window and sent to a camp. After an amnesty in 1945 she was barred from Moscow. He applied every year for her return and was refused until after Stalin's death; she was cleared in 1956.[2],[7]

  • 1947

    Discrimination

    On 4 October 1947 the Literaturnaya Gazeta attacked him for 'servility' to the West. He was then accused of idealism and cosmopolitanism, his promotion to professor was blocked, and he was removed from his institute's academic council. He noted that being Jewish made him a better target.[2],[9],[13]

  • 1951

    Dismissal

    In 1951 or 1952 (sources differ) he was removed from thermonuclear work, even losing the right to read his own notes; he had already been barred from the secret weapons center at Arzamas-16. Physics World attributed this to his Jewish background and his wife's past.[2],[7],[8]

  • 1953

    Persecution

    During the 1953 Doctors' Plot he feared that Jews would be exiled to camps. He and his wife celebrated the day of Stalin's death for the rest of their lives.[2],[16]

  • 1959

    Discrimination

    For decades he was often refused permission to travel abroad; in 1959 he was even kept from an international physics conference held in Kiev. In 1984 and 1985 he was told he could go to Copenhagen only without his wife.[2],[12]

  • 2007

    Other

    After he opposed religious teaching in Russian schools, activists sought to prosecute him under hate-speech laws, and a pro-Kremlin party website ran a doctored photo of him in a prison shirt marked 666.[14]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishIdentified as Jewish, secular

Ginzburg was born in Moscow to Jewish parents: Lazar Ginzburg, an engineer, and Avgusta Vil'dauer-Ginzburg, a doctor from Latvia. A lifelong atheist who spoke neither Hebrew nor Yiddish, he still wrote in his Nobel autobiography that he carried a Jewish national feeling. He traced it to family roots, some Jewish traditions at home, and antisemitism: he had been called an ethnic slur and lived through the postwar state campaign against Jews. He was glad when a worthy person turned out to be Jewish. He supported Israel's existence while criticizing its religious laws, and spoke out against antisemitism.[2],[8],[9],[12]

Key dates

  1. October 4, 1916

    Born in Moscow to Lazar Ginzburg, an engineer, and Avgusta Vil'dauer-Ginzburg, a doctor.[1],[2]

  2. 1931

    Starts work as a laboratory assistant in an X-ray lab, where his interest in physics takes hold.[2],[8]

  3. 1938

    Graduates in physics from Moscow State University and turns from optics experiments to theory, encouraged by Igor Tamm.[2],[7],[8]

  4. September 1, 1940

    Completes his PhD and joins the Lebedev Physical Institute (FIAN) in Moscow, where he works for the rest of his life.[2],[7]

  5. 1946

    Marries Nina Ermakova, a former political prisoner barred from living in Moscow.[2]

  6. October 4, 1947

    Attacked in the Literaturnaya Gazeta during the campaign against 'cosmopolitans'; his professorship is blocked.[2]

  7. 1948

    Joins Tamm's secret hydrogen-bomb group and proposes lithium-6 deuteride as fuel.[2],[10]

  8. 1950

    Publishes the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity with Lev Landau.[5],[7]

  9. 1953

    After Stalin's death, elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences; his wife is finally allowed to return to Moscow.[2]

  10. 1966

    Elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.[2]

  11. 1971

    Succeeds Tamm as head of FIAN's theoretical physics department, and publishes his first list of key open problems in physics.[2],[7]

  12. 2003

    Awarded a third of the Nobel Prize in Physics with Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett for theories of superconductors and superfluids.[1],[4]

  13. July 23, 2007

    Signs an open letter by Academy members to President Putin warning against the growing role of the Church in schools and science.[15]

  14. November 8, 2009

    Dies in Moscow, aged 93.[1],[7],[12]

Sources

  1. 1.Vitaly L. Ginzburg - Facts · NobelPrize.org
  2. 2.Vitaly L. Ginzburg - Biographical (Nobel autobiography, dated 23 November 2003) · NobelPrize.org, 2003
  3. 3.On superconductivity and superfluidity (Nobel Lecture, 8 December 2003) · NobelPrize.org, 2003
  4. 4.Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2003 · NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 2003
  5. 5.Popular information: Superconductors and superfluids (Nobel Prize in Physics 2003) · NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 2003
  6. 6.Award ceremony speech, Nobel Prize in Physics 2003 · NobelPrize.org, 2003
  7. 7.Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg (obituary), by Lev P. Pitaevskii (Physics Today 63(5), 2010) · Physics Today (AIP), 2010
  8. 8.Vitaly Ginzburg: 1916-2009 · Physics World (IOP Publishing), 2009
  9. 9.Vitaly L. Ginzburg (profile) · Atomic Heritage Foundation / National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
  10. 10.V.L. Ginzburg and the Atomic Project, by V.I. Ritus (Physics-Uspekhi 60, 413-418) · Physics-Uspekhi, 2017
  11. 11.Soviet Hydrogen Bomb Program · Atomic Heritage Foundation / National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
  12. 12.Vitaly Ginzburg dies at 93; Nobel Prize-winning Russian physicist, by Thomas H. Maugh II · Los Angeles Times, 2009
  13. 13.Vitaly Ginzburg: Nobel Prize-winning physicist who helped the Soviet Union develop the hydrogen bomb, by Martin Childs · The Independent, 2009
  14. 14.RUSSIA: Religious revival troubles Vitaly Ginzburg, by Nick Holdsworth (14 October 2007) · University World News, 2007
  15. 15.Open letter to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir V. Putin from the Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (23 July 2007) · Scepsis, 2007
  16. 16.Anticosmopolitan Campaign · YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  17. 17.'Ground Zero' at the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan · UN News, 2019
  18. 18.Conductors for commercial MRI magnets beyond NbTi: requirements and challenges (Parizh M, Lvovsky Y, Sumption M, Superconductor Science and Technology 30, 014007) · IOP Publishing / PubMed Central, 2016
  19. 19.Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2003 (magnetic resonance imaging) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet), 2003
  20. 20.Committing to sustainability in MRI · GE HealthCare
  21. 21.What problems of physics and astrophysics seem now to be especially important and interesting (thirty years later, already on the verge of XXI century)? by V.L. Ginzburg (Physics-Uspekhi 42, 353-373) · Physics-Uspekhi, 1999
  22. 22.Diagnostic Technology: Trends of Use and Availability in a 10-Year Period (2011-2020) among Sixteen OECD Countries (Martella M, Lenzi J, Gianino MM, Healthcare) · MDPI / PubMed Central, 2023
  23. 23.An introduction to the Ginzburg-Landau theory of phase transitions and nonequilibrium patterns, by P.C. Hohenberg and A.P. Krekhov (Physics Reports 572) · arXiv (preprint 1410.7285), 2015

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