Biography
Joel Lebowitz was born in Taceva, then in Czechoslovakia, now Ukraine, in 1930 into a Jewish family. During World War II he was deported with his family to Auschwitz, where his father, his mother, and his younger sister were killed in 1944. After being liberated from the camp, he moved to United States by boat, and he studied in an Orthodox Jewish school, at Brooklyn College, and at Syracuse University. Here he got a PhD in 1956 under the supervision of Peter G. Bergmann. Then he continued his research with Lars Onsager, at Yale University, where he got a faculty position. He moved to the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1957 and to the Belfer Graduate School of Science of Yeshiva University in 1959. Finally he got a faculty position at Rutgers University in 1977, where he holds the prestigious George William Hill Professor position. During his years at the Yeshiva University and Rutgers University he has been in contact with several scientists, and artists, like Fumio Yoshimura and Kate Millett. In 1975 he founded the Journal of Statistical Physics. In 1979 he was president of the New York Academy of Sciences. He has been one of the most active supporters of dissident scientists in the former Soviet Union, especially refusenik scientists.
Read more about this topic: Joel Lebowitz
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)