Mark Azbel

Mark Azbel was born in 1932 in Poltava

Azbel was born in 1932 in Poltava to a Jewish family of physicians. In 1941, during the war, the family moved to Novosibirsk, and in 1944 it returned to Kharkiv.

He finished school in 1948 and studied physics at the university in Kharkiv. After graduating, he taught mathematics at an evening school. In 1958 he completed advanced research under Lev Landau and Pyotr Kapitsa.

Azbel worked on the quantum physics of electrons in metals and made the first prediction of cyclotron resonance in metals, known as the Azbel-Kaner resonance. His 1964 paper on electrons in a magnetic field contributed to the discovery of the Hofstadter butterfly in 1974. In 1964 he began working at Moscow State University and at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In 1972 he applied to emigrate to Israel and was refused. He joined the refusenik movement and edited a samizdat monthly, and in 1973 Tel Aviv University appointed him a lecturer, at first teaching by telephone. He left the Soviet Union in 1977 and described this period in a 1981 book.

In Israel he became a professor at Tel Aviv University and later professor emeritus, working in quantum physics and biology. He died in 2020 in Ramat HaSharon.