Prof. Yosef Klefter - winner of the Israel Prize in the field of chemistry and physics research

Prof. Klefter served for a decade as the president of Tel Aviv University * In its reasoning, the committee stated that: "The Israel Prize in Physics and Chemistry Research was given to Professor Yosef Klefter for his groundbreaking contributions to the dynamics of anomalous movement in various diverse systems in the fields of chemistry, physics and biology

The Minister of Education, Rabbi Rafi Peretz, announced today (Tuesday) the winner of the Israel Prize in the field of chemistry and physics research - Prof. Yosef Klefter, and congratulated him on winning the prize. The award committee met under the chairmanship of Prof. Shlomo Havlin, chairman of the committee, with the members - Prof. Lucian Ben Gigi, Prof. Rachel Yerushalmi Rosin and Prof. Uri Cheshnovsky.
In its reasoning, the committee stated that: "The Israel Prize in Physics and Chemistry Research was given to Professor Yosef Klefter for his groundbreaking contributions in the dynamics of anomalous movement in various diverse systems in the fields of chemistry, physics and biology. Prof. Clifter developed the theoretical infrastructure for describing accelerated or decelerated movement in relation to Einstein's law of diffusion. Over the years, the enormous and universal importance of his work has become clear, as more and more systems can be exhaustively described by the methods he developed.

Prof. Clifter's CV as provided by the award committee

Professor Yosef (Yossi) Clifter was born in Tel Aviv in 1945 to parents from Slovakia who immigrated to Israel illegally in 1939. Clifter completed his elementary and high school studies in Rishon Lezion.

After finishing high school, he began his studies, as part of the academic reserve, at Bar Ilan University. Towards the end of the studies, the Six-Day War broke out, in which Clifter took part as a reserve, during which he was wounded in the battle for the commissioner's palace. Before his enlistment in the IDF, he managed to finish his master's degree under the guidance of Professor Haim Halpern on the topic: "On the theory of surface states in crystals".

Upon his release from the IDF, he was accepted for doctoral studies at the School of Chemistry of Tel Aviv University. He did his doctoral thesis under the guidance of Professor Yehoshua Yurtner on the subject: "Electronic states and energy transfer in ordered and disordered molecular crystals". During his studies Klefter married Ferahia and their children Einat and Dan were born.

After receiving the doctorate, the Clafter family moved to Boston as part of a post-doctorate in the chemistry department at MIT (1978). During his post-doctorate period, Klefter turned to a new field of research around movement in complex systems. These were his first steps in questions related to random moves in amorphous media. In this framework, Clifter published a work on a subject that was controversial, a work that put an end to that controversy and formed a basis and justification for the use of time-dependent random moves, and which established the uses of these moves in chemical and physical systems. Following this research, he was invited to join as a researcher at the research center of the Exxon company (which turned to directing solar cells and the movement of charge carriers in them) and the family moved in 1980 to the state of New Jersey. The years of research at Exxon were fruitful, revealing new questions and problems of applied origin, during which Clifter's work contributed significantly to the understanding of reactions on fractal structures as models for composite systems and the first significant results were obtained in the study of anomaly in diffusion. In 1987, the family returned to Israel and Kleftar joined, as part of an Alon scholarship, the chemistry school of Tel Aviv University.

At Tel Aviv University, Clifter established an active research group that became a magnet for many visitors and branch collaborations. In fact, the group formed the nucleus of a community that gradually branched out and today it is an active and vibrant international network based on his colleagues, his students and his students' students.

Over the years, since the return, ties with Exxon have continued and close ties have been added with universities such as: Bayreuth, Berlin, and Freiburg in Germany, ETH in Switzerland, Charles University in Prague, Paris VI University, MIT, Ecole Polytechnique Columbia and more. Clafter has been invited to deliver courses to doctoral students at Columbia University and MIT and workshops at other institutes.

Over time, the research topics of Clifter and his group expanded to also include dynamics in geometrically limited systems and movement in pores, development of models to study the problem of friction between surfaces and later expanding the use of the insights of anomalous diffusion into the field of single protein spectroscopy. The studies in fluctuations and catalysis of individual enzymes led to addressing the questions of the basic structure of proteins and their structure-function relationship.

The works on the topics of Levy moves, the restricted geometries and the introduction of new equations in the field of anomalous diffusion gained momentum and became popular. The mathematical tools that were developed found their way into different disciplines and therefore many groups and in many fields began to use the ideas and approaches. Following them, a series of conferences, meetings and invitations to write cover articles were created. The topics of these works received extensive coverage in plenary lectures and review articles on the topic of diffusion and the reactions derived from it.

Clafter was accepted as a fellow of the American Physical Society (1993), won the Humboldt Prize of the German government (1996), in 1999 Clafter received the Weizmann Science Prize of the Tel Aviv Municipality, in 2003 the Kolthoff Prize of the Technion and in 2004 he received the Rothschild Prize. He was invited as a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Freiburg, Germany (a relationship that ended when he assumed the position of president of the university). He was later awarded an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Wroclaw, an honorary doctorate from the Slovak Academy of Sciences and an honorary professorship from Qinghua University in China.

In 2011, his book on first steps in random moves was published in collaboration with Prof. Sokolov. In 2016, the book was published in another edition.

Starting in 1996, Clifter served as a member of the National Science Foundation's management and was responsible for the field of exact sciences and technology in the foundation, and between 2002 and 2009, Cohen served as chairman of the National Science Foundation's management. During his time, the cooperation agreement between the National Science Foundation and the Chinese counterpart was signed, a cooperation that expanded and continues even today. Philanthropic support was also obtained for the field of life sciences and medicine and the framework of a doctor-researcher was established which enables and encourages research among the hospital doctors.

In 2009, Clifter was elected the eighth president of Tel Aviv University. He assumed the position following a leadership crisis the university was going through. In the ten years of his presidency, the rifts were bridged and the university reached significant records and achievements. Emphasis was placed, among other things, on promoting research while taking care of new resources, expanding international collaborations (facing east), encouraging and supporting the lowering of barriers between fields and raising the miracle of innovation in learning and entrepreneurship. During his presidency, for two years he chaired the committee of heads of universities, a period in which he worked tirelessly to maintain freedom of expression and academic freedom in universities. The term of the presidency ended in May 2019.

More of the topic in Hayadan:
Prof. Yosef Clifter, president of Tel Aviv University, was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Tel Aviv University and Tsinghua University from China present the "Shin" project: a joint research center that will be established to the extent of 300 million dollars
The strange physical laws of the nano world