Name Giulio Racah Role Physicist | Doctoral students Moshe Flato | |
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Books Irreducible Tensorial Sets [by] U. Fano [and] G. Racah | ||
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Giulio (Yoel) Racah (Hebrew: ג'וליו (יואל) רקח; February 9, 1909 – August 28, 1965) was an Italian–Israeli physicist and mathematician.
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Biography
Born in Florence, Italy, he took his degree from the University of Florence in 1930, and later studied in Rome with Enrico Fermi. In 1937 he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Pisa. In 1939, due to application of Anti-Jewish laws in Italy, Racah immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, and was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was later Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, and finally Rector and acting President. The physics institute at the Hebrew University is named "The Racah Institute of Physics".
In the Israeli War of Independence, Racah served as deputy commander of the Israeli forces defending Mount Scopus.
Racah's research was mainly in the fields of quantum physics and atomic spectroscopy. He first devised a systematic general procedure for classifying the energy levels of open shell atoms, which remains to this day the accepted technique for practical calculations of atomic structure. This formalism was described in a monograph coauthored by his cousin Ugo Fano (Irreducible Tensorial Sets, 1959).
Racah died at the age of 56, apparently asphyxiated by gas from a faulty heater.
Awards
In 1958, Racah was awarded the Israel Prize in exact sciences.