Gregory Pikus

Pikus was a Soviet theoretical physicist whose work shaped the modern theory of semiconductor band structure. He developed the method of invariants in band theory and, with Bir and Aronov, the Bir–Aronov–Pikus mechanism of electron spin relaxation, and he predicted the circular photogalvanic effect. Documented as being of Jewish descent, he lost family in the Stalinist terror and later worked at the Ioffe Institute in Leningrad.