Jonas Alster (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: יונס אלסטר; born 18 July 1933) is an Israeli

nuclear physicist Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

Biography

Born in Berlin to an observant Jewish Orthodox family, he is the son of Lidi and Wolf, a merchant in the clothing business. At the age of 4, his family emigrated to Holland, and in 1942 they escaped the Nazis, becoming refugees in Switzerland. He was the first in his family to attend university, earning his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics in 1961 from the technical university of Delft, via heavy ion scattering experiments carried out at the linear accelerator (Hilac) at Berkeley's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, under the local supervision of Homer Conzett and the supervision at Delft of Aaldert. Wapstra. In Amsterdam, he married Rosette Dasberg, and after some academic stops in Berkeley, Seattle, Boston and Paris, he joined the physics faculty at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

(TAU) in 1968, following an invitation by

Yuval Ne'eman Yuval Ne'eman (; 14 May 1925 – 26 April 2006) was an Israeli theoretical physicist, military scientist, and politician. He was Minister of Science and Development in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was the President of Tel Aviv University ...

and Avivi Yavin. Rosette and Jonas have five children. Along his scientific career Jonas, continued to observe the Jewish faith, study the

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

, and actively participate in Jewish history courses at TAU. Jonas has high level language skills, speaking fluently English,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, Dutch, French, and

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

Scientific career

Jonas is best known for his discovery at

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in ...

(LASL) of the nuclear isovector giant monopole resonance, studied by the pion-nucleus charge exchange reaction. This discovery was made possible following his efforts with David Bowman, Helmut W. Baer, Martin Cooper and Murray Moinester et al. at LASL and TAU to help design and construct a high resolution neutral pion spectrometer for Nuclear Structure experiments. He also wrote an important review article with Jaime Warszawski on pion-nucleus charge exchange reactions, which discussed his studies of Isovector giant dipole resonances and isobaric analog states. With Homer Conzett, he was among the first to measure and develop theoretical descriptions of heavy ions elastic scattering. He is credited together with Eli Piasetzky, Alan Carroll et al., of the first direct observation at Brookhaven National Laboratory of two-nucleon short range correlations in nuclei using high momentum transfer hard (p,2p) knock-out scattering reactions. With Gerald Peterson, Murray Moinester, and Jechiel Lichtenstadt et al., he made significant contributions to Nuclear Structure via elastic and inelastic electron and alpha scattering, and via direct transfer pickup and stripping reactions. He also contributed with Bruce Barnett et al. at Canada's

TRIUMF Triumf may refer to: * TRIUMF, Canada's national particle accelerator centre * 14959 TRIUMF, a minor planet * S-400 Triumf, a Russian anti-aircraft weapon system developed in the 1990s * Triumf Riza (1979–2007), Kosovo police officer and member o ...

accelerator to determine neutron and proton radii in nuclei from low energy pion scattering. With Jechiel Lichtenstadt et al., at the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, Ca ...

(SLAC), via deep inelastic electron scattering, he made important contributions to measuring nucleon electric and magnetic form factors, as well as quark and gluon distributions in nucleons.Arnold, R. G., Alster,J. et al. (1986). Deuteron magnetic form factor measurements at high momentum transfer. Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 1723.

References

External links

Prof. Jonas Alster
on

website {{DEFAULTSORT:Alster, Jonas 1933 births Israeli Jews 20th-century Israeli physicists Jewish physicists Academic staff of Tel Aviv University Israeli nuclear physicists Living people Emigrants from Nazi Germany Immigrants to the Netherlands Expatriates in Switzerland Expatriates in France Israeli expatriates in the United States Immigrants to Israel