Shmuel (Mula) Shtrikman (; 21 October 1930 to 11 November 2003) was an Israeli physicist, and a professor at the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( ''Machon Weizmann LeMada'') is a Public university, public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, fourteen years before the State of Israel was founded. Unlike other List of Israeli uni ...

. Winner of the

Israel Prize The Israel Prize (; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History Prior to the Israel Prize, the most significant award in the arts was the Dizengoff Prize and in Israel ...

for Research in Physics in 2003.

Biography

Born in

Brest, Belarus Brest, formerly Brest-Litovsk and Brest-on-the-Bug, is a city in south-western Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the Polish town of Terespol, where the Bug (river), Bug and Mukhavets rivers meet, making it a border town. It serves as ...

(then Poland) to Abraham and Esther Shtrikman, sister of Sapir and brother of biochemist Nathan Sharon. Shtrikman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1934. In the first year the family lived in

Kfar Saba Kfar Saba ( ), officially Kfar Sava , is a List of Israeli cities, city in the Sharon plain, Sharon region, of the Central District (Israel), Central District of State of Israel, Israel. In 2019 it had a population of 110,456, making it the 16th-l ...

; a year later they moved to

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

. In the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

he served in the Air Force. Shtrikman began his studies at the

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is a public university, public research university located in Haifa, Israel. Established in 1912 by Jews under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, the Technion is the oldest university in the coun ...

in 1950. After graduation with a BSc in 1954, he joined the Department of Electronics at the

, where he did his doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering, received in 1958. In 1967 he was appointed professor at the Weizmann Institute. In 1981 to 1982 he served as head of the department of the Electronic Physics Institute. In 1994 he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His research concerned various fields of physics: the behaviour of particles under the influence of a magnetic field; liquid crystals; Lifshitz points; composites constructed from inhomogeneous distributions of ingredients; and calculating the elasticity of composite materials. On this last issue he worked together with Zvi Hashin; their joint work is considered one of the key breakthroughs in the field, cited over 2500 times according to Elsevier.

Awards

Shtrikman received the following awards: * Weizmann Prize for Science (1968) * Michael Landau Prize (1975) * IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer (1984 and 1997–1998) * Ben Gurion University Applied Electronics Prize (1988) * R. M. Burton Award by the Weizmann Institute Foundation (1988) *

in Physics (2003) * Israel Defense Prize (1979 and 1987)

Bibliography

* E. H. Frei, S. Shtrikman, and D. Treves, 1957, Critical Size and Nucleation Field of Ideal Ferromagnetic Particles, ''Phys. Rev.'' 106, 446. * Z. Hashin and S. Shtrikman, 1963, A variational approach to the elastic behaviour of multiphase materials: ''J. Mech. Phys. Solids'' 11, 127–140.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shtrikman, Shmuel 1930 births 2003 deaths Belarusian Jews People from Polesie Voivodeship Polish emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Jews from Mandatory Palestine Israeli physicists Israeli Air Force personnel Academic staff of Weizmann Institute of Science Israel Prize in physics recipients Members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Israel Defense Prize recipients Burials at Har HaMenuchot