Brilliant Hungarian-born atomic physicist who convinced Einstein to contact Pres. Roosevelt about the need for US to build bomb ahead of the Nazis. But afterwards was opposed to the post-war arms race.
American. Nobel Prize 1988 "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons thru the discovery of the muon neutrino".
astronomer (Whos Who entry & JYB 2000 p211)
quantum optics
string theory (Jewish father)
Polish Born physicist who closely worked with Einstein for a ten year period starting in the 30s. They jointly authored a number of papers. Infield, somewhat remarkably, went back to Poland after the War. He protested the Polish governments supression of free speech in 1964. (1898-64).
Soviet Jew. Nobel Prize, 1962. For his pioneering theories in condensed matter, esp. liquid helium.
(1878-1968) Austrian Jewish-born physicist who worked closely with Otto Hahn and Max Planck on atomic research and certainly deserved a share of Hahns 1944 Nobel for the discovery of fission. The top female physicist of the 20thC.--she is often depicted as the "poor" victim of anti-woman and anti-Jewish discrimination. Born of Jewish parents in Vienna (they were both Jewish-she was not "part" Jewish as sometimes reported). She converted to Lutheranism in 1908. One biographer says this was not "opportunistic". Yeah, right. It wasnt tough enough being a woman, add a Jew on top of that. She came from an "assimilated" background--so throwing off her her Jewishness was not hard. But you dont see a lot of contemporary Jewish scientists in the US converting away, do you? No, because no matter how assimilated--it makes no difference today if you are Jewish. In pre-WWII Europe, if one was assimilated, converting away removed an important professional impediment that seemed a "relic". Meitner was the physicist; Hahn the chemist--and she was as important as he in the discovery of fission. Meitner buried her head in the sand and continued to work with Hahn until 1938 (later by correspondence). She hoped her Austrian citizenship, wartime service, and powerful friends would protect her. Well, the Nazis would not make an exception for her. And maybe it is just as well--because if they had--she probably would have been forced to be part of the German weapons program. Hahn "failed" to adequately inform the Nobel commitee of her contribution and she did not get credit. Although she did get the Fermi Prize in 1966 as a consolation. She never complained much about Hahns behavior. Most speculate because she didnt want to be closely associated with fission/the atom bomb. She refused to work on the Manhattan project. (Eds. Note--This long entry is an attempt, thru one life, to explain why so many of the listed scientists and others have the notation converted to Christianity.)
physicist, quantum physics
American. Winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for his discovery of the tau lepton.
Leon Pinsker was a physician, a Zionist pioneer and activist, and the founder and leader of the Hovevei Zion, also known as Hibbat Zion (Hebrew: חיבת ציון, Lovers of Zion) movement.
Ibn Ezra (1089 - 1164) was born at Tudela, Navarre (now in Spain) in 1089, and died c. 1167, apparently in Calahorra. He was one of the most distinguished Jewish men of letters and writers of the Middle Ages. Ibn Ezra excelled in philosophy, astronomy/astrology, mathematics, poetry, linguistics, and exegesis; he was called The Wise, The Great and The Admirable Doctor.
Volynov is a Soviet cosmonaut who flew two space missions of the Soyuz programme: Soyuz 5, and Soyuz 21. He was the first Jewish cosmonaut.
Resnik was an American engineer and a NASA astronaut who died in the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger during the launch of mission STS-51-L. Resnik was the second American and first Jewish woman astronaut, logging 145 hours in orbit. She was a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland. The IEEE Judith Resnik Award for space engineering is named in her honor.
Hoffman, Ph.D. is a Jewsih American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Hoffman made five flights as a space shuttle astronaut, including the first mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, when the orbiting telescope's flawed optical system was corrected.
Baker, M.D., M.P.H. is a Jewish American physician and a NASA astronaut. Baker serves as Chief of the Education/Medical Branch of the NASA Astronaut Office.
Ivins is a former Jewish American astronaut and a veteran of five space shuttle missions. She has a degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Apt, Ph.D. is a Jewish American astronaut and professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Before he became an astronaut, Apt was a physicist who worked on the Venus space probe project, and used visible light and infrared techniques to study the planets and moons of the solar system from ground-based observatories.
Wolf is a Jewish American astronaut, medical doctor, electrical engineer. Wolf has been to space four times. Three of his spaceflights were short-duration Space Shuttle missions, the first of which was STS-58 in 1993, and his most recent spaceflight was STS-127 in 2009. Wolf also took part in a long-duration mission aboard the Russian space station Mir which lasted 128 days, and occurred during Mir EO-24.
Fettman is a Jewish American pathologist and researcher who flew on NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-58 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia as a Payload Specialist.
