Benjamin Levich

Benjamin Levich , originally Russian Вениамин Григорьевич Левич , Wenjamin Grigorjewitch Lewitsch, (born March 30, 1917 in Kharkiv , † January 19, 1987 in Englewood , New Jersey ) was a Soviet-American physical chemist . He is considered one of the founders of physico-chemical hydrodynamics.

Life

Levich studied in Kharkiv and at the State Pedagogical Institute in Moscow, where he received his doctorate under Lev Landau . In his dissertation on processes in a galvanic cell , he also introduced rotating electrodes as a research subject. He then went to the Institute for Colloid Chemistry and Electrochemistry of the Academy of Sciences, headed by Alexander Frumkin , and headed the Theoretical Department from 1958 to 1972. From 1954 to 1964 he was professor of theoretical physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and then professor of chemical mechanics at Lomonosov University .

Like his two sons, who left the Soviet Union in 1975, he made an application to leave the Soviet Union in 1972. At that time there was increased repression, especially against Jewish scientists in the Soviet Union. He lost his professorship and the management of his post at the institute. In 1978 he left for Israel and in 1979 he became Albert Einstein Professor at the City College of New York , where he was director of the Institute for Applied Chemical Physics. He was also a professor at Tel Aviv University. His successor as a professor at City College was Andreas Acrivos .

His son Evgeny Levin was a professor of physics at City College.

plant

In addition to physicochemical hydrodynamics (turbulence, flows with chemical reactions, flows that are dominated by variations in surface tension, etc.), he dealt with electrochemistry, collision reactions in the gas phase and quantum mechanics of electron transfer between ions and liquid and electrodes and ions. The Levich equation for the current in a solution around a rotating electrode is named after him. He proved that the apparently paradoxical property of air bubbles in viscous liquids to have the same rate of rise as massive spheres of the same density is due to the accumulation of small amounts of surface-active substances at the gas-liquid interface. He also showed that surprisingly certain phenomena in viscous liquids can be described by equations for non-viscous liquids (e.g. damping of capillary waves, steady ascent rate of bubbles in liquids of low viscosity that are not too large).

Memberships and honors, departure from the Soviet Union

He was a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1958), but lost membership in 1979 when he gave up his Soviet citizenship as part of his application to leave the country. Numerous scientists in the West campaigned for his departure (for example at a conference in Oxford in 1977) and also in 1978 the US Senator Edward Kennedy on a visit to the Soviet Union. He was one of the most prominent scientists and the only member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences who was allowed to leave the country in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1977 he became an external member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and in 1982 of the National Academy of Engineering . In 1973 he received the Palladium Medal of the American Electrochemical Society and in 1977 the Faraday Medal .

Fonts

• Veniamin G. Levich: Physicochemical Hydrodynamics , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1962
• Theoretical Physics: an advanced text , 4 volumes, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1970 to 1973
  • Volume 1: Theory of the electromagnetic field. Theory of Relativity. 1970
  • Volume 2: Statistical physics. Electromagnetic processes in matter. 1971
  • Volume 3: Quantum mechanics. 1973
  • Volume 4: Quantum statistics and physical kinetics. 1973

literature

• Andreas Acrivos: Benjamin G. Levich. In: Memorial Tributes National Academy of Sciences, Volume 5, National Academy Press 1992, pp. 165-170.
• D. Brian Spalding (Editor): Physicochemical hydrodynamics. VG Levich Festschrift, 2 volumes, Imperial College London, Advance Publ., London 1977.

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times, Jan. 21, 1987

Individual evidence

1. ^ English transcription Veniamin