Igal Talmi | |
|---|---|
יגאל תלמי | |
 | |
| Born | (1925-01-31)January 31, 1925 (age 100) |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Alma mater | Hebrew University ETH Zurich |
| Known for | Nuclear shell model |
| Awards | Weizmann Prize (1961) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Nuclear physics |
| Institutions | Weizmann Institute of Science |
| Doctoral advisor | Wolfgang Pauli |
Igal Talmi (Hebrew:יגאל תלמי; born January 31, 1925) is an Israelinuclear physicist.
Igal Talmi[1] was born in 1925 inKiev,Ukraine, then part of theSoviet Union. His family immigrated toMandate Palestine later that year and settled inKfar Yehezkel. After graduating fromGymnasia Herzliya inTel Aviv in 1942, he joined thePalmach.[2]
In 1947, Talmi completed his master's degree in physics at theHebrew University of Jerusalem, writing his M.Sc. thesis under the guidance ofGiulio Racah. In 1949, he earned his doctorate at theETH Zurich in Switzerland underWolfgang Pauli. From 1952 to 1954, he was a research fellow atPrinceton University, where he worked withEugene Wigner.
Igal is married to Chana (Kivelewitz). They have two children: a son, Prof. Yoav P. Talmi, M.D., a head and neck neurosurgeon; and a daughter, Prof.Tamar Dayan [he], a zoologist[3] who is married to General (Aluf)Uzi Dayan.
In 1954, Talmi joined theWeizmann Institute of Science where he became Professor of Physics in 1958. Talmi was one of the founders of the Department of Nuclear Physics at the Weizmann Institute. He served as the Head of the Nuclear Physics Department (1967–1976), and the Dean of the Faculty of Physics (1970–1984). Talmi spent sabbatical years atPrinceton,Stanford,Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),Yale and other universities as avisiting professor.
Talmi has been a member of theIsrael Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 1963, and was the Chairman of the Division of Sciences in from 1974 to 1980. He also served on the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.[4]
In addition to his influential papers and conference talks, Talmi also wrotetwo books that served as guides and companions to generations of nuclear structure theorists. The first, written with the lateAmos de-Shalit, was a veritable bible of shell theory and the second, written some 30 years later, continued the tradition of being an exhaustive compendium of relevant results and derivations.
Talmi's main field of research is the theory ofnuclear structure.[5] Theatomic nucleus can be composed of a large number ofprotons andneutrons which move due to strong interactions between them. In spite of their complexity, nuclei exhibit some simple and regular features. Most importantly, nuclei behave as if they move independently in a common staticpotential well. This gives rise to the existence of shells of protons and neutrons much like the electronic shells in atoms. Nuclei whose proton and neutron shells are complete have special stability and the numbers of protons and of neutrons in them are calledmagic numbers. This picture of the nucleus is called the nuclearshell model[6] to obtain the information from experimental data and use it to calculate and predict energies which have not been measured. This method has been successfully used by many nuclear physicists and has led to deeper understanding of nuclear structure. To calculate energies of nuclear states it is necessary to know the exact form of the forces which act between the nuclear constituents. These are still not sufficiently known even after many years of research. Talmi developed a method[7] to obtain the information from experimental data and use it to calculate and predict energies which have not been measured. This method has been successfully used by many nuclear physicists and has led to deeper understanding of nuclear structure.The theory which gives a good description of these properties was developed. This description turned out to furnish the shell model basis of the elegant and successfulinteracting boson models.[8]Talmi also participated in the study of explicitfermion–boson mappings required to connect the interacting-boson model with its shell-modelroots and in the introduction of the boson F-spin analog to nucleon isospin.
Internet streaming broadcasting both on WM and QT (at 64k bps, 256 kbit/s, 1M bps) and DVD ISO (NTSC and PAL) delivery are now available atRIKEN Nishina Center.
