February 1994 saw the centenary of the birth of Yakov Il'ich Frenkel, a distinguished Russian theoretical physicist. His was one of the well‐known names among physicists in the first half of the century. He belonged to the generation of universalists, and his contributions range from condensed matter to nuclear physics, and from classical electrodynamics to geophysics and biophysics. He was a prolific writer, and his books, translated into German and English, were widely used texts. He educated many graduate students and played an important part in building up physics institutions in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and '30s