Vadim Berezinskii

Vadim L'vovich Berezinskii (15 July 1935, Kiev – 23 June 1980, Moscow) was a Soviet physicist. He was born in Kiev, graduated from Moscow State University in 1959, and worked in Moscow and the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is famous for having identified the role played by topological defects in the low-temperature phase of two-dimensional systems with a continuous symmetry. His work led to the discovery of the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition, for which John M. Kosterlitz and David J. Thouless were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2016.