Scienceנועם סוקר

Noam Soker

Noam Soker is an Israeli theoretical astrophysicist who chaired the physics department at the Technion from 2009 to 2015.

born 1958Binary model of planetary nebulaeCore-degenerate model of supernovaeModel of Eta Carinae's eruption

Occupation: astrophysicist, researcher, astronomer
Education: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Noam Soker was born in 1958 in Israel

Noam Soker was born in Israel in 1958 and grew up on Kibbutz Yas'ur. He attended the Na'aman educational institution from 1971 to 1977.

In 1975 he began studying mathematics and physics at Oranim, and he finished his first degree at the Technion in 1982 after a break for military service. He earned his doctorate at the Technion in 1986 under Mario Livio. His thesis dealt with Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton accretion in a non-uniform gas.

He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Virginia from 1986 to 1989 and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1989 to 1992. There he worked on cooling flows in galaxy clusters and began studying planetary nebulae.

In 1992 he returned to Israel with an Alon Fellowship and taught at Oranim, where he became a full professor in 1998. He moved to the Technion in 2003 and served as dean of its physics faculty from 2009 to 2015. He later became dean of science at Guangdong Technion.

His research links planetary nebulae to binary stars and jets, and he proposed models for Type Ia supernovae and the eruption of Eta Carinae. He is married with 3 children and lives in Shimshit.