Nir Shaviv

Nir Shaviv was born in 1972 in Ithaca

Nir Joseph Shaviv was born on July 6, 1972, in Ithaca, New York, and grew up in Haifa. His parents are the physicist Giora Shaviv and the architect Edna Shaviv, both at the Technion.

He began taking courses at the Technion at age 13 and finished a bachelor's degree in physics while still in high school. He served 3 years in Unit 8200 of the IDF. He received a master's degree in physics in 1994 and completed a doctorate in astrophysics at the Technion in 1996.

From 1996 to 1999 he was a Lee DuBridge Prize Fellow at Caltech, and from 1999 to 2001 a postdoctoral researcher at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. He joined the Racah Institute of Physics in 2001 and became a full professor in 2012. He later chaired the institute.

In astrophysics he showed that objects can shine above the Eddington luminosity without breaking apart, which helped explain the eruption of Eta Carinae and classical novae. In climate research he proposed that cosmic rays and solar activity play a large role in climate, a view that disagrees with the scientific consensus and drew rebuttals.

He headed the Hebrew University faculty union from 2008 to 2011 and chaired the coordinating council of faculty unions from 2010 to 2014. In 2025 he was a candidate for rector of the Hebrew University, a candidacy disputed because of his climate views. He is married with 2 children.