Scienceבנימין פיין

Benjamin Fain

Benjamin Fain was an Israeli physicist and former Soviet refusenik who later wrote on science and Judaism.

1930 to 2013Soviet refusenik activismQuantum electronics and laser physicsBooks on science and Judaism

Born: 17 February 1930, Kyiv
Died: 14 April 2013, Pardes Hanna-Karkur
Occupation: physicist
Education: N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod

Benjamin Fain was born in 1930 in Kyiv

Fain was born in Kyiv in 1930 to a Jewish family. His father was a mathematician, and he was named after his grandfather, who was killed in the Proskurov pogrom. During World War II the family moved several times and then settled in Dushanbe, where he finished school.

He began studies at the Moscow Institute of Energetics in 1948 and moved to physics at Gorky University in 1950. He completed his doctorate there with honors in 1956 under Vitaly Ginzburg.

In 1965 he became a professor at Gorky University, and in 1966 he joined the Institute of Solid State Physics in Chernogolovka. From 1972 he took part in the Zionist movement, and after applying to emigrate in 1974 he became a refusenik and lost his job. In 1976 he led a sociological study of Soviet Jewry, and after arrests, searches and a hunger strike he reached Israel in 1977.

In Israel he worked at Tel Aviv University in quantum electronics, lasers and condensed matter, and kept working for Soviet Jews. From 1998 he turned to the philosophy of science and Judaism and wrote several books in Hebrew. He died in 2013.