The Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University was declared today (April 19, 2023), as a historical heritage site by the European Physics Society (EPS). Prof. Luc Berge (EPS president) inaugurated the site in Jerusalem.

This is the first heritage site in Israel to be declared by the EPS, and is the result of the initiative of Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund and Prof. Eliezer Rabinovici of the Hebrew University.

Guilio Racah (1909-1965) joined the Hebrew University in 1940 when he was forced to leave Italy due to anti-Semitic persecution. Racah brought with him up-to-date knowledge of modern physics from the European scientific community which he acquired by working closely with world leaders such as Enrico Fermi and Eugene Wigner. For twenty-five years after his arrival, Racah led a revolution in the theoretical understanding of atomic spectroscopy and developed advanced group-theory based tools for the analysis of nuclear systems and elementary particles. Racah educated generations of Israeli scientists and is considered one of the fathers of theoretical physics in Israel.

His work put the Hebrew University and Racah Institute of Physics on the world map of physics.

In the photo (from left to right): Prof. Tamir Shefer (Rector of the Hebrew University), Prof. Luc Berge (EPS president), Prof.s Eliezer Rabinovici, Hanoch Gutfreund and Nadav Katz (Hebrew University).