Frank-Kamenetsky, Victor Albertovich

Born February 15 ( 28 ), 1915 in the city of Vilno .

He was the youngest son in the family of the famous chemist Albert Grigorievich (1875-1935) and Hana (Anna) Abramovna Arons (1881-19 ??), daughter of the Vilnius merchant of the second guild Abram Leibovich Arons ^[1] . In Vilna, the family lived in Nikodimsky Lane, d. 6, later in Nikolaevsky Lane, d. 1-64 .

In 1916, the family moved to Irkutsk , and his father served as the first dean of the Department of Chemistry of Irkutsk University.

In 1932 he entered the Geological Faculty of Leningrad University , graduated in 1937 with a degree in Geochemist-Crystallograph. In the same year he entered graduate school at the Department of Crystallography, where he worked for his whole life.

With the outbreak of war with Finland, he was drafted into the army, where he served until 1946, after serving in the rank of major, was wounded, awarded orders and medals. After being wounded, during the blockade he came to Leningrad .

In 1946 he returned to Leningrad, to the Department of Crystallography of the Geological Faculty of Leningrad State University, where he graduated from graduate school and defended his thesis for the degree of candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences. His dissertation was devoted to epitaxially oriented mineral (including clay) inclusions in barite crystals of deposits in the North Caucasus.

He was engaged in the study of the relationship of the crystal structure and morphology of barite crystals, studying the structural and morphological relationships of cuprite and chalcopyrite minerals. Genetic crystal chemistry of minerals is becoming the main area of ​​his interests.

In 1962 he defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences on this topic and wrote a monographic work “The Nature of Structural Impurities and Inclusions in Minerals” (1964).

Author of several books, as well as (in collaboration with closest colleagues) about 400 scientific articles .

He was famous in the scientific world for an X-ray study of clay minerals; he owns a scientific discovery .

Many years ^{[ when? ]} led the X-ray laboratory of the Department of Crystallography of the Geological Faculty of Leningrad State University / St. Petersburg State University.

From 1968 to 1989 he was head of the Department of Crystallography of the Geological Faculty of Leningrad State University.

Member of the editorial boards of the journals Crystalography, Kristall und Technik (Crystal Research and Technology), Powder Diffraction, ^{[2] [3]} .

He taught at the Faculty of Geology of Leningrad State University / St. Petersburg State University, gave lectures on crystallography, crystal chemistry with the basics of radiography, taught several special courses, and considered it very important to introduce students to scientific work.

His appeal to students on the pages of the newspaper "Leningrad University" in 1980 read:

  “The main word of my parting words is to youth, students and graduate students, young employees.  I wish them creative burning in study and science, two inextricably linked and necessary elements of university life, in what distinguishes university education, university science and creates the basis for their development and improvement, for new successes of our entire team.  I would like to wish our wonderful talented youth, our students and graduate students more activity, courage, daring in the knowledge of the chosen branch of knowledge, in a deeper use of the unlimited opportunities that the university with its departments and laboratories gives, many of which are large scientific and educational schools well-known not only in our country, but throughout the world ... I wish students and graduate students to be more active in their studies, more boldly introduce themselves into scientific creativity, more boldly choose relevant projects  areas of research, improve the activities of student scientific societies, create scientific seminars in the chosen specialty, be an active force in improving the educational and scientific process in departments and faculties.  Do not be passive consumers of knowledge.  Remember that the student years are the years of the most effective scientific creativity, the years of the establishment of creators in science. ”  [four] 

In 1948, together with Leningrad State University scientists Olga Mikhailovna Rimskaya-Korsakova and Vladimir Fedorovich Barabanov, they organized the Club of Young Geologists in the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers, which has been operating up to now (Academician Academician A. Obruchev KYUG St. Petersburg City Youth Creativity Palace) ^{[5 ] [6]} .

He died on May 12, 1994 in the city of St. Petersburg .

• Father's brothers - Zakhary Gershonovich and Israel Grigorievich - scientists.
• The elder brother, David Albertovich Frank-Kamenetsky, is a theoretical physicist.

Returning to Leningrad after the war, V.A. Frank-Kamenetsky married Tatyana Aleksandrovna Kolusheva (? —2008). Children:

• Olga Viktorovna Frank-Kamenetskaya - Professor, Department of Crystallography, Geological Faculty, St. Petersburg State University, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences.
• Alexander Viktorovich Frank-Kamenetsky is a geophysicist and researcher of the Antarctic.
• Grandson - Dmitry Alexandrovich Frank-Kamenetsky, petrologist, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences (1998).

• All-Union Mineralogical Society , member of the council (1976),
• Chairman of the Commission for New Minerals,
• headed the Commission on the radiography of mineral raw materials in Russia,
• Member of the Scientific Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences "Formation and structure of crystals",
• Member of the Board of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists,
• Commission on New Minerals of the International Mineralogical Association,
• Commission on the crystallographic nomenclature of the International Union of Crystallographers,
• Honorary Member of the International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry ( w: en: International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry ),
• member of mineralogical societies ^{[ what? ]} Great Britain and France.

In 1995, in honor of Viktor Albertovich Frank-Kamenetsky, a new mineral was named francamen , discovered in the charritite deposit of the Murunsky massif of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The discovery of the mineral belongs to the students of V. A. Frank-Kamenetsky - Irina Vasilyevna Rozhdestvenskaya and Lidia Vasilyevna Nikishova, together with Siberian colleagues ^[7] .

• Bibliography in the information system " History of Geology and Mining " RAS.