Giulio Racah

Giulio ( Yoel ) Racah ( born February 9, 1909 in Florence, Italy, † August 28, 1965 ) was an Israeli- Italian mathematician and physicist.

Racah was trained in Florence and in 1930 received his doctorate at the university with Enrico Persico. Subsequently, he worked in Rome with Enrico Fermi, and in Zurich, Wolfgang Pauli. In 1932 he became a professor at the University of Florence and in 1937 took over a professorship at the University of Pisa.

In 1939 he had to give up his job because of the Fascist racial laws and emigrated to Palestine. There he was appointed professor of theoretical physics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1946 he was dean of the Faculty. Later he was also Rector and Executive President of the University. Racah was instrumental in the construction of theoretical physics in Israel.

Racahs main areas in the research were quantum physics and atomic spectroscopy. Today he is best known for the algebra he developed the coupling of angular momenta, with applications in atomic physics and nuclear physics. This means important in coordination chemistry parameterized energy values ​​as Racah parameters are known.

With his cousin Ugo Fano he wrote in 1959 the book Irreducible Tensorial Sets ( Academic Press, New York). In 1958, Racah received the Israel Prize for Physics awarded for lifetime achievement. He died in 1965 in Florence on the way to Amsterdam due to a gas leak in a defective heater.

In his honor, the Racah in 1970 founded the Institute of Physics, at the same time, the International Astronomical Union named the Racah crater on the Moon after him.