The life and fate of a Soviet physicist

On 10 November 1937 during the Great Purge, Joseph Stalin's secret police executed Lev Shubnikov on trumped-up charges of treason. Although he was only 36 at the time, Shubnikov had already made pioneering discoveries in magnetism and low-temperature physics. As a wanton waste of scientific talent, his killing ranks with those of Archimedes in 212 BC and Antoine Lavoisier in 1794.