Nobel foundation · Public domain

Ilya Frank shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pavel Cherenkov and Igor Tamm for explaining Cherenkov radiation — the faint blue glow given off when a charged particle moves through a medium faster than light does in that medium, a phenomenon later put to use in particle detectors and nuclear reactors. A Soviet physicist working under Stalin, he was twice awarded the Stalin Prize, in 1946 and 1953, and received the USSR State Prize in 1971.