Yakov Lvovich Alpert (; March 1, 1911 – October 5, 2010) was a Russian-born American physicist whose principal field of research was space plasma physics.

Biography

He was born in Ivnytsia, a village near

Zhytomyr Zhytomyr ( ; see #Names, below for other names) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the Capital city, administrative center of Zhytomyr Oblast (Oblast, province), as well as the administrative center of the surrounding ...

, in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. In 1928 he obtained an excellent grade in the entrance examination for the Ukrainian Polytechnic Institute, but because his father, a commercial traveler, was considered not to be a worker, he was refused admission; instead, he took employment as a carpenter. In 1929 he left Zhitomir for

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

, where he worked first as a builder's labourer, then as a draughtsman for architectural exhibitions. He was able to get a job as a technician at the Radio Institute of the Ministry of Communications in 1931, and from that time he remained in his chosen field of physics. During his scientific career in the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, Alpert worked from 1931 to 1934 at the Communications Radio Institute; then, from 1935 until 1951 at the

Lebedev Physical Institute The Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LPI RAS or just LPI) (in ), situated in Moscow, is a Russian research institute specializing in physics. The institute was established in its present shape in 1934 by academician ...

(FIAN) of the Academy of Sciences; and finally at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Propagation of Radio Waves, and Ionosphere (

IZMIRAN The Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IZMIRAN, ) is a scientific institution of the Russian Academy of Sciences. this institute was founded in 1939 by Nikolay Pushk ...

) of the Academy of Sciences, from 1952 until he left the USSR in 1987. In 1973 he and his wife Svetlana Pivkova decided to emigrate. The first step was to obtain a letter from a relative in Israel, inviting them to settle there; at that time, even non-Jews leaving the Soviet Union could only go to Israel. He requested such a letter through Israel's Academy of Sciences, and in due course received one. Its arrival was noticed by the Soviet authorities, and as was then customary he was demoted at his place of work, in his case to a post of senior scientist with a reduced salary, while she was dismissed from her post (at a different Institute) and could not obtain one elsewhere. In 1975 they were finally permitted to apply for exit visas, but this application was refused, as were 26 other such applications they made during the next 12 years. During this period, he took an active part in a scientific seminar to maintain his skills and those of his fellow “

refusenik Refusenik (, ; alternatively spelled refusnik) was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authorities of the Soviet Union and oth ...

s”. It was organized by

Victor Brailovsky Dr Victor Brailovsky (; born 27 December 1935) is an Israeli computer scientist, mathematician, aliyah activist and former politician. He served as Minister of Science and Technology for six days in 2004. In May 1986 Brailovsky was awarded an Ho ...

, and the other participants included Alexander Lerner,

Yuri Orlov Yuri Fyodorovich Orlov (, 13 August 1924 – 27 September 2020) was a particle accelerator physicist, human rights activist, Soviet dissident, founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a founding member of the Soviet Amnesty International group. H ...

, and Anatoly Sharansky; though not himself a candidate for emigration,

Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet Physics, physicist and a List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world. Alt ...

often attended the seminar and supported the refuseniks until his exile to Gorky in 1980. Following the arrest of Brailovsky in 1981, these seminars were often held at the Alperts' apartment. In 1987, the Alperts received their visas and left for the US, where they arrived in 1988 and settled near Boston. For the rest of his professional life he was a Senior Staff Scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He never retired formally, but his last publication under the auspices of the Center for Astrophysics was made in 2001.

Scientific work

Alpert's main scientific interests at the FIAN and the IZMIRAN were * Propagation of radio waves, particularly natural ones (i.e., "atmospherics") below and within the ionosphere. * Physical structure of the ionosphere and the magnetosphere, and plasma wave processes in these regions. * Interaction of moving bodies with a plasma. Between 1936 and 2001, he had 8 books published in Russian and 11 in English (9 original monographs, 3 second editions), the last one being his autobiography. Also he published about 200 scientific papers in Russian or in English and a dozen popular scientific papers in Russian. Forty-three of them are listed in

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References

External links

* Y.L. Alpert
''Tribute to the Scientific School of L.I. Mandelshtam.''
* Lev Pitaevskii
Appreciation in Physics Reports 339, 2001.

Obituary
in American Geophysical Union, SPA Section Newsletter 17 (Issue 77), 2010 (text file will be automatically downloaded) *
Obituary
in Physics-Uspekhi 54 (Issue 5), 2011 (in Russian)
Translation
to English. {{DEFAULTSORT:Alpert, Yakov Lvovich 1911 births 2010 deaths Russian nuclear physicists Soviet Jewish physicists 20th-century American physicists Jewish Russian physicists Ukrainian Jews Refuseniks Soviet emigrants to the United States People from Zhytomyr Oblast American nuclear physicists