Minister of Education: "One of the world leaders in the field of physical-theoretical chemistry". Currently, Prof. Nitzan serves as the director of the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute for Advanced Studies
The recipient of the Israel Prize in Chemistry is Prof. Avraham Nitzan from Tel Aviv University. In its reasoning for awarding the prize, the committee stated that "Prof. Avraham Nitzan is one of the world leaders in the field of physical-theoretical chemistry. His significant scientific contributions led to the understanding of energy transfer processes, within and between molecules, in solutions and solids.
Prof. Nitzan laid the foundations for understanding electrical conduction processes in a molecule and molecular contacts, and for clarifying the relationship between electron transfer processes and molecular conductivity.
These works of his form the basis for the innovative research field of molecular electronics. Prof. Nitzan's researches are cornerstones in the modern fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Prof. Avraham Nitzan made important contributions to the development of the quality scientific research infrastructure and to the activity of the higher education system in the State of Israel.
The chairman of the committee of the award in the field of administrative sciences was Prof. Raphael Meshulam, when Prof. Yehoshua Yurtner and Prof. Shlomo Rosen served alongside him as members of the committee.
The Ministry of Education provided the details of Prof. Avraham Nitzan's biography:
Prof. Avraham Nitzan was born in Tel Aviv in 1944. He completed his bachelor's degree in chemistry as part of the academic reserve at the Hebrew University in 1964, and completed his master's degree at the same institution in 1966. His master's thesis, "On residual hydrogen in aqueous solutions irradiated with gamma radiation Under the guidance of Prof. Gideon Shafsky, it is an experimental study of the effect of radiation on chemical processes occurring in water and aqueous solutions.
After military service in the years 1966-9, he began his doctoral studies in the Department of Chemistry (now the School of Chemistry) at Tel Aviv University and received the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degree from this institution in 1972. The research paper for the doctoral degree, "Non-radiative transitions in condensed phases ” Here is a theoretical study of the relaxation processes that occur following electronic excitation of large molecules. All of Prof. Nitzan's academic degrees, Ph.D., M.Sc., B.Sc., were awarded "summa cum laude".
After completing his doctoral thesis, Prof. Nitzan moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and worked there for two years (1972-1974) as a post-doctoral fellow. He spent another year as an assistant professor at Northwestern University and during this year he was invited to join the chemistry department at Tel Aviv University. He joined this department as an associate professor in 1975 and in 1981 was promoted to the rank of full professor. In addition to his teaching and research activities, Prof. Nitzan was active during this period in fostering relationships between the chemistry department and between high school students and teachers throughout the country, he organized lectures and workshops for students and teachers and served for several years as the academic reader of the chemistry matriculation exams and then as a member of the chemistry subject committee of the Ministry of Education.
In the years 1983-1986 Prof. Nitzan served as head of the School of Chemistry, and between 1995 and 1998 he held the position of Dean of the Faculty of Exact Sciences of Tel Aviv University. In these two roles, Prof. Nitzan places special emphasis on the interdisciplinary aspect of science studies. During his tenure as the head of the School of Chemistry, he developed the combined tracks in chemistry/physics, chemistry/mathematics and chemistry/computer science. As dean, he led the development of the integrated course for materials science studies between the faculties of exact sciences and engineering and led to the introduction of a science course into the curriculum of the faculty of humanities. As part of his other positions at the university, he served as head of the teaching committee of the Faculty of Exact Sciences, was a member of the university appointments committee, the Senate representative on the board of trustees and the Senate representative on the coordinating committee. Prof. Nitzan currently serves as the director of the Mortimer and Raymond Sklar Institute for Advanced Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Prof. Nitzan's research work is in the field of the theory of chemical dynamics - a field of chemistry that studies the nature of the chemical and physical processes underlying chemical reactions with the aim of understanding the basis of their existence and developing the ability to predict their progress. Below are some of the main studies:
(a) At the beginning of his career (1970-1980), Prof. Nitzan's research was focused on energy transfer processes in molecular systems. Understanding the mechanism, direction and efficiency in which energy passes between different regions and different degrees of freedom in the chemical system is a necessary condition for understanding chemical reactions in this system. Prof. Nitzan made significant contributions to the understanding of the basic processes underlying this relationship between energy transfer and chemical activity. His contributions are particularly important for understanding processes that occur in condensed phases and under the influence of electromagnetic radiation, in which the interactions between the intramolecular dynamics and between the activation and relaxation processes under the influence of the external environment determine the route, speed, efficiency and utilization of the chemical process.
(b) Prof. Nitzan's research during the postdoctoral period at MIT (1972-1974) together with Prof. John Ross concentrated on the thermodynamics and kinetics of non-linear, open and far from equilibrium chemical systems. During this research he predicted the existence of cyclic chemical oscillations in photochemical systems far from equilibrium (a phenomenon whose existence was later confirmed) and studied the relationship between transitions in reaction-diffusion systems far from equilibrium and between phase transitions.
(c) The surprising discovery (1994-7) by Feischmann, Van Duyne and their associates of the increase in Raman scattering from molecules adsorbed on certain surfaces led Prof. Nitzan to the field of electromagnetic phenomena involving molecules adsorbed on dielectric surfaces. Together with Prof. Garsten (City College, NY) he developed in the early 1981s the electromagnetic theory of the enhancement of Raman scattering from such molecules and the theoretical prediction (which was later confirmed in many experiments) according to which many other photochemical and photophysical processes associated with molecules adsorbed on rough dielectric surfaces will be affected in a similar way . The resulting theoretical idea, according to which such surfaces will cause effective catalysis of light-induced chemical reactions, later led to the issuance of a patent to Prof. Nitzan and his partner Bruce. The field of research that began with these works is now known as molecular plasmonics, and the works of Nitzan and his associates (1986-XNUMX) are still recognized as groundbreaking and key works in the field.
(d) Prof. Nitzan and his group carried out a series of basic studies in the period 1975-1995 that contributed to significant progress in the field of chemical dynamics in condensed phases. He is credited with developing (with his student Carmeli) the non-Markovian theory of activation processes in condensed phases, developing (with his partners Ratner and Droger) innovative methods and models to describe electrical conduction in solid and polymeric ionic conductors (in particular the development of the dynamic percolation theory to describe conduction in systems characterized by -dynamic order), and his basic research (with his students Neria, Makov and Olander) on the dynamics of mass processes in polar solvents and its effect on charge transfer processes in such solvents. Later (1990-2000) the emphasis in the work on the melting processes shifted to research (with Neria, Brent and Landman) on electron melting in water and in small clusters of water molecules, and the role of quantum effects and the influence of solvent size in electron melting processes was clarified.
(e) The research on electron transfer processes led Prof. Nitzan to research (since the mid-90s) a certain type of interphase processes - those that take part in the developing field of molecular electronics. The desire to understand the electronic structure, charge and energy transfer properties, relaxation processes and capacitance phenomena, in molecules that connect electrodes of conductors and semiconductors, mark new experimental and theoretical challenges. In the research of Prof. Nitzan and his students in this field, theoretical and numerical methods were developed to describe these processes, the relationship between the electronic conduction properties of a molecular system and electron transfer processes in this system was clarified, the role played by inelastic processes such as inelastic tunneling, phase loss processes and polaron formation processes was investigated The conduction properties of molecular contacts and clarified the great importance of thermal relaxation processes, heat phenomena and heat transfer processes for understanding the stability of these systems.
Prof. Nitzan's works have been published in over two hundred and eighty articles. In addition, he wrote chapters in many books, edited some of them and lectured on his works at over 140 international conferences. Some of these articles are recognized as cornerstones in their field. In addition, in 2006 his book Chemical Dynamics in Condensed Phases was published (Oxford University Press, 719 pages, 2006). This book is based in many parts on Prof. Nitzan's own research and is currently considered the main textbook and reference of the field.
Since joining Tel Aviv University, Prof. Nitzan has been invited many times to serve as professor or visiting scientist at various universities and research centers. Among these institutions are Northwestern University, University of California at Santa Barbara, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Colorado, Allied Chemical Laboratories, Bell Laboratories (USA), University of Konstanz, Technical University Munich, Forschungcenter Juelich (Germany), University of Paris Sud (France), Pohang Institute of Technology (S. Korea), Weizmann Institute of Science and the Technion. Several of his visits to Germany (1995 and again in 2008) were within the framework of the Humboldt Prize. His series of lectures at Duke University (2007) were part of the John Morrow Visiting Professorship and his series of lectures at the Technion (2009) were part of the Schulich Lecturer. During his visit this year to the University of Sydney, he gave the first of the lectures named after Noel Hush, one of the pioneers of the modern theory of electron transfer processes. At Northwestern University, Prof. Nitzan taught many times and he serves there today as Adjunct Professor.
Prof. Nitzan, one of the best teachers of the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, is a sought-after teacher in the international arena as well and has been invited to teach at many universities and international workshops. The workshops on behalf of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP): "Beijing College on Science at the Nanoscale", (Beijing, 2006), as well as "African Regional College on Nanoscale Science", (Cape Town, 2007) deserve special mention. which were intended for students from the third world.
In addition to his activity in the field of chemistry and academia in Israel, Prof. Nitzan held various positions in the national bio-scientific community. He previously served on the editorial board of the journals Journal of Physical Chemistry and Journal of Chemical Physics, since 2004 he has been on the editorial board of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience and since 2006 - of the prestigious journal Physical Reviews Letters. In addition, since 2006, he is a member of the committee accompanying the Transport on the Molecular Scale research program of the German National Research Foundation (DFG) and serves as an external reader for the European Research Foundation ERC.
Prof. Nitzan has been recognized many times for his scientific achievements. In addition to many research grants, he won the Fulbright Scholarship (1972), the Kolthoff Prize (1995), the Humboldt Prize (1995), the Israel Chemical Society Prize (2003) and the Manchot Prize (2004).
In 1990 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and in 2004 - a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2006 he was elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2008, Prof. Nitzan won the most important personal research grant of the European community, the ERC Advanced Grant, and in 2009 he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences.
One response
Well done.