Igor Evgen’evich Tamm (1895–1971)

Abstract

According to the family legend, the Tamms’ ancestry goes back to Germany. I.E.Tamm’s grandfather left for the south of Russia from a small town on the Elbe in the middle of the last century. He earned his living repairing agricultural machines. In the home of a wealthy landowner, Theodor (Fyodor) Tamm met a Russian girl, the governess of the house and married her. They had a son, Evgenii, later Igor Tamm’s father. E.F.Tamm received an education in engineering. In the early nineties he married Olga Mikhailovna Davydova. Their eldest son Igor was born in Vladivostok on July 3, 1895. E.F.Tamm was working on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the Far East at the time. In the beginning of the twentieth century the Tamms moved to the European part of the country. Igor Evgen’evich’s reminiscences of the “great migration” were rather vague. They travelled by sea. After having passed through the Suez Canal they stayed in Cairo. They then crossed the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, to Odessa. The family settled in Elizavetgrad in the Ukraine. There for many years Evgenii Fyodorovich was the municipal engineer. Although this may not sound very attractive now, in those long-gone times a municipal engineer was quite a prominent figure. E. F. Tamm made a large contribution to the Elizavetgrad city management: he constructed the water supply and laid the first tramline.

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Dr. E. Jurkovitz for his kind help in preparing the English text of the paper.