Bruria Kaufman

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Bruria Kaufman

Bruria Kaufman (August 21, 1918 – January 7, 2010) was an American theoretical physicist. She contributed to

Harry Lipkin
.

Biography

Letter by Albert Einstein, Bruria Kaufman and others criticizing Menachem Begin and his party at the time, Herut.

Bruria Kaufman was born in New York City to a Jewish family of Ukrainian origin. In 1926 the family immigrated to the British Mandate for Palestine, living first in Tel Aviv, and then in Jerusalem. Her main interests during her youth were music and mathematics.[1]

She studied mathematics, earning a B.Sc. from

Zellig S. Harris
in 1941.

In 1960, she settled on

Mishmar Ha'emek and adopted a daughter, Tami.[2]

Kaufman returned to the US in 1982. They lived in Pennsylvania, where her husband taught. He died in 1992. Kaufman moved to Arizona and married the Nobel laureate

Willis Eugene Lamb in 1996, although the marriage ended in divorce. She died in January 2010 at Carmel Hospital in Haifa, following a stay at a nursing home in Kiryat Tiv'on, not far from Haifa. In keeping with her wishes, her body was cremated.[3]

Scientific career

Kaufman was a research associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1948 to 1955, where she worked with John von Neumann (1947/48) and with Albert Einstein (1950–1955). She spent the following years at the University of Pennsylvania working on a mathematical linguistics project.

Kaufman returned to Israel in 1960 (with Harris) where she became professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (1960–1971) and later on at the University of Haifa (1972–1988).

Selected publications

References

  1. ^ "Bruria Kaufman-Harris: physicist who worked with Albert Einstein". Times Online. March 3, 2010.(subscription required)
  2. ^ Dromi, Uri (January 15, 2010). אחרי מות | פרופ' ברוריה קופמן הריס [Obituary: Professor Bruria Kaufman Harris]. Haaretz (in Hebrew).
  3. ^ Memorial webpage (Hebrew)
  4. ^ "Bruria Kaufman". CWP at UCLA. Archived from the original on 2004-09-25.