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Harry J. Lipkin

Harry J. Lipkin, also known as Zvi Lipkin, was an Israeli theoretical physicist who worked in nuclear and particle physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

1921 to 2015Group theory in particle physicsThe book Lie Groups for PedestriansCo-founding Journal of Irreproducible ResultsWeizmann Institute nuclear physics department

Born: 16 June 1921, New York City
Died: 15 September 2015, Rehovot
Occupation: physicist, university teacher, nuclear physicist
Education: Cornell University, Princeton University

Harry J. Lipkin was born in 1921 in New York City

Lipkin was born in New York City in 1921 and went to high school in Rochester, New York. He studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and graduated in 1942.

During World War II he worked as an engineer at the MIT Radiation Laboratory on a radar receiver. He earned a doctorate from Princeton University in 1950, studying under David Bohm.

In 1950 he moved to Israel with his wife Malka and settled at Kibbutz Sasa. The government sent him to the French atomic facility at Saclay to study nuclear reactors. In 1954 he returned and set up Israel's first nuclear physics course at the Weizmann Institute.

He helped found the Weizmann Institute's nuclear physics department in 1956 and became its head in 1960. His work applied group theory to physics, including quark models in the 1960s. In 1955 he co-founded the satirical science magazine Journal of Irreproducible Results with Alexander Kohn.

From the late 1960s he worked for Soviet Jews refused permission to emigrate. In the 1980s he helped develop LITAF, a method for teaching children to read. He died in Rehovot in 2015 and was buried at Kibbutz Sasa.