Joshua Zak

Joshua Zak was born in 1929 in Vilnius

Joshua Zak was born in Vilnius in 1929 and attended a Hebrew school. Under Nazi occupation he was held in the Vilna Ghetto from 1941 to 1943, then in labor camps in Estonia and the Stutthof concentration camp. He took part in the death march from Stutthof.

After his release he was drafted into the Red Army for 3 years. In April 1948 he returned to Vilnius, finished high school and won a silver medal for his studies. In 1953 he was the Lithuanian champion in 1,000 meter single kayak, and in 1955 he earned a master's degree in physics from Vilnius University.

He began doctoral studies in Leningrad but left them to immigrate to Israel. He completed a doctorate at the Technion in 1960 under Nathan Rosen. During postdoctoral work at MIT he discovered the magnetic translation group.

In 1964 he joined the Technion faculty. He introduced the kq representation, also called the Zak transform, in 1967, and headed the Solid State Institute from 1970 to 1973. In 1989 he found a topological phase in one-dimensional crystals, known as the Zak phase.

He received the Wigner Medal in 2014 and the Israel Prize in 2022. He died on 14 March 2024.