Giulio Racah

Giulio Racah was born in 1909 in Florence

Racah was born in 1909 in Florence, Italy, to a Jewish family, the son of Pia and Adriano. He grew up on the family farm in Pisa. His mother was the sister of the mathematician Gino Fano, and the scientists Ugo Fano and Robert Fano were his cousins.

He earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Florence in 1930. He then worked with Enrico Fermi in Rome and studied with Wolfgang Pauli in Zurich. In 1937 he became a professor of physics at the University of Pisa.

In 1939, because of the anti-Jewish laws in Italy, he moved to Mandatory Palestine and became professor of theoretical physics at the Hebrew University. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War he served in the defense of Mount Scopus.

His research focused on quantum physics and atomic spectroscopy, and he developed a general method for classifying the energy levels of atoms with open shells. He was dean of the science faculty from 1946 to 1948 and was elected rector in 1961, also serving as acting president from 1961 to 1962. He received the Israel Prize in exact sciences in 1958.

He was elected to a second term as rector in 1963 and held the post until his death. He died in 1965 in a gas leak accident while in Florence and was buried at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem. The Racah Institute of Physics and a crater on the Moon are named after him.