Eshel Ben-Jacob
| Eshel Refael Ben-Jacob Breslav | |
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April 1956 / July 2011
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| Born |
April 13, 1952 Haifa, Israel |
| Died | June 5, 2015 |
| Residence | Israel, United States |
| Nationality | Israel |
| Fields | Physics, Biological Physics, Complexity and Biocomplexity |
| Institutions |
University of Michigan (1984–1989) Tel Aviv University (1986–2015) Fellow CTBP, UCSD (2004–2013) Fellow CTBP, Rice University (2013–2015) |
| Alma mater | Tel Aviv University (B. Sc., M.Sc. and PhD) |
| Known for | Pattern formation and self-organization (the snowflake problem), coulomb blockade and single electron based transistor, collective swarming (swarm intelligence), social behaviors of bacteria, systems neuroscience: creation of the first neuro-memory-chip, "Let the complex be simple"—simplifying biocomplexity |
| Notable awards | Landau Research Prize (1986), The Siegle Research Prize of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (1996), SciAm 50 (2007), Weizmann Prize in Exact Sciences (2013), International member of the American Philosophical Society (2014) |
| Notes | |
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Vice President (1998–2001) and President (2001–2004) of the Israel Physical Society. Chair (since 2010) of the Advisory Council of High School Physics Education, Israel Ministry of Education. Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella della solidarietà Italiana (Since 2008).
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Eshel Ben-Jacob (full name Eshel Refael Ben-Jacob Breslav;Hebrew: אשל רפאל בן-יעקב 13 April 1952 – 5 June 2015), was a theoretical and experimental physicist at Tel Aviv University, holder of the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems, and Fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) at Rice University. During the 1980s he became an international leader in the theory of self-organization and pattern formation in open systems, and later extended this work to adaptive complex systems and biocomplexity. His specialization in self-organization of complex systems yielded the breakthrough of solving the long-standing (since Kepler) snowflake problem. In the late 1980s, he turned to study of bacterial self-organization, believing that bacteria hold the key to understanding the larger biological systems. He developed new pattern forming bacteria species, became a pioneer in the study of bacterial intelligence and social behaviors of bacteria, and was an influential figure in establishing the now rapidly evolving physics of living systems (biological physics and physical biology) disciplines. He was an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum.
Eshel Ben-Jacob was born on April 13, 1952 in Haifa Israel into a family of pioneers that immigrated to Israel in the 1930s. His mother, Miriam Ben-Ya'akov, was born in Israel and his father, Ya'akov Breslav, came to Israel with his family at the age of 5. He grew up in Even Yehuda, a village founded in 1932 by a handful of families including his maternal grandparents. Ben-Jacob began conducting research as a teenager, first at home and for several months towards the end of high school, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. After graduating from high school, he matriculated to study physics and mathematics at Tel Aviv University and was drafted to the Israeli Navy two years later. He completed his B.Sc., M.Sc. and most of his PhD studies during the service (1972–1980) first in the Navy Weather Forecast unit and later in the Navy Intelligence. The Navy granted him a special Personal Citation for demonstrating exceptional creative thinking and intellectual courage, thus enabling successful and life saving operation.
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