Human Rights and Science: Biographical Notes

Abstract

I describe some of my activities, academic and personal, since coming to the United States in 1946 at the age of 16. It has been a long journey with many ups and downs. I selectively and briefly describe my experiences in a rabbinical school with an attached (parochial) high school, at Brooklyn College, in graduate school at Syracuse University, during a postdoc with Lars Onsager at Yale University, and in my academic positions at Stevens Institute of Technology, Yeshiva University and Rutgers University. I write at greater length about some experiences traveling to the Soviet Union (now Russia) during the period of 1978–1990, where I went to meet with refusenik and dissident scientists. There, I met Andrei Sakharov, whose fight for human rights has been an inspiration to me. I conclude with a talk I recently gave (via film) at the March 2024, meeting of the American Physical Society.