Eugene Chudnovsky

Eugene Michael Chudnovsky (born 12 December 1948) is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY) and a member of the doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate School. Chudnovsky is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), elected 1993 for "seminal contributions to random ferromagnetism, macroscopic quantum tunneling, and hexatic order in high Tc materials". He is mostly known for his work on quantum tunneling of magnetization. Chudnovsky explained magnetic avalanches experimentally observed in molecular magnets as deflagration.

Chudnovsky received his undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral education at Kharkiv University in Ukraine, in a school of theoretical physics built by Lev Landau and his students. The denial by USSR of exit visa to Chudnovsky in 1979 led to his unemployment for eight years during which he continued independent research in theoretical physics and participated in the unofficial Refusenik Science Seminar in Moscow. He was frequently harassed and interrogated by the KGB.

In 1987 Chudnovsky was allowed to emigrate and joined the faculty of the Physics Department of Tufts University in Boston. The following year he moved to the City University of New York (CUNY). He has held visiting positions at research centers in the USA, Asia, and Europe—most notably at the University of Barcelona - Spain, where he co-organizes Annual International Workshop on Magnetism and Superconductivity.

Chudnovsky has been active in the field of human rights. He has served as Chair of the APS Committee on International Freedom of Scientists, Member-at-Large of the Forum on International Physics, Chair of the Committee on Human Rights of Scientists of the New York Academy of Sciences, and Co-Chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists. In 1990s he directed Program for Refugee Scientists that resettled over one hundred refugee scientists in the United States.