Matvei Petrovich Bronstein

The Bronstein Prize in Loop Quantum Gravity is offered to post-doctoral scholars in the field, the inaugural winner of which was Eugenio Bianchi in 2013.

Bronstein's books for children "Solar Matter" (Солнечное вещество), "X Rays" (Лучи X), "Inventors of Radio" (Изобретатели радио) were republished after his reputation had been rehabilitated posthumously on 9 May 1957. In 1990, his wife had a monument erected in the Levashovo Memorial Cemetery where he was thought to have been buried.

Matvei Petrovich Bronstein (Russian: Матве́й Петро́вич Бронште́йн, December 2 [O.S. November 19] 1906, Vinnytsia – February 18, 1938) was a Soviet theoretical physicist, a pioneer of quantum gravity, author of works in astrophysics, semiconductors, quantum electrodynamics and cosmology, as well as of a number of books in popular science for children.

In August 1937, while was living in his apartment at 38 Rubinstein Street, St. Petersburg, Bronstein was arrested as part of the Great Purge. He was convicted by a list trial in February 1938 and executed the same day in a Leningrad prison. His wife was told that he had been sentenced to 10 years of labor camps without the right of correspondence.

Solar Matter (Солнечное вещество) was first published in the Koster magazine in 1934 and then in book form in April 1936,. whereupon Bronstein made an inscription on a copy to L. Chukovskaya, his copy editor, “To my dear Lida, without whom I would have never been able to write this book.” Later, Chukovskaya wrote that the history of helium had become intertwined in her and Bronstein's life, “The work on the book brought us closer. In fact, the book got us married."