Tsvi Piran

Tsvi Piran was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv

Piran was born in Tel Aviv in 1949 and grew up in Givatayim under the name Tsvi Pikarchik. He studied mathematics and physics at Tel Aviv University and finished his first degree in 1970.

While serving in the IDF, he completed a master's degree in space sciences at Tel Aviv University in 1972. He earned his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1976, with a thesis on astrophysical processes near black holes.

He did postdoctoral work at Oxford and at the University of Texas at Austin, then joined the Hebrew University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 1985 he wrote the first numerical code to calculate the collapse of a rotating black hole and its gravitational waves. With Eichler, Livio and Schramm, he proposed that gamma-ray bursts come from mergers of neutron star pairs, and he co-developed the fireball model.

In 1983 he founded a winter school in theoretical physics with Steven Weinberg. He became a professor in 1988 and served as dean of the Hebrew University School of Business Administration. He lives in Bnei Atarot, is married to Dalia and has 2 daughters.