Abraham Nitzan

Abraham Nitzan was born in 1944 in Tel Aviv

Abraham Nitzan was born in Tel Aviv on May 3, 1944. His brother Menachem Nitzan headed a children's department at Schneider.

He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1964 and a master's degree there in 1966, under Gideon Czapski. After army service he completed a Ph.D. at Tel Aviv University in 1972 under Joshua Jortner. His thesis dealt with non-radiative transitions in large molecules.

He was a research fellow at MIT from 1972 to 1974, then spent a year at Northwestern University before joining Tel Aviv University. He became a full professor in 1981, headed the School of Chemistry from 1983 to 1986 and was dean of Exact Sciences from 1995 to 1998. He later directed the university's Advanced Studies Institute.

His research covers light and matter interactions, reactions in condensed phases and processes at interfaces. In the 1980s he helped lay the basis of molecular plasmonics, and he later worked on molecular electronics. He has published more than 350 scientific papers.

After retiring from Tel Aviv University, he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. He received the Israel Prize in chemistry in 2010 and the EMET Prize in 2012.