Joshua Jortner
Wolf Prize Laureate in Chemistry 1988
Joshua Jortner
Affiliation at the time of the award:
Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Award citation:
“for their incisive theoretical studies elucidating energy acquisition and disposal in molecular systems and mechanisms for dynamical selectivity and specificity”.
Prize share:
Joshua Jortner
Raphael D. Levine
Joshua Jortner (born in 1933, Poland) earned his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1960. Following his doctoral studies, Jortner served as a lecturer in the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1961 to 1963. Between 1962 and 1964, he worked as a research associate at the University of Chicago.In 1964, Jortner was appointed as a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, also serving as its inaugural chairman. Between 1966 and 1972, he held various administrative roles at Tel Aviv University, including deputy rector, acting rector, and vice president.
Professor Joshua Jortner is one of the most influential theoretical physical chemists of his time. His works cover a vast range of fields, such as the theory of solvated electrons, properties of excited electronic states of molecules, coherent multiphoton processes, charge transfer in polar solvents and in biophysical systems, and the dynamics of supercooled large molecules and molecular clusters. His impact on each of these fields would have been enough to earn him worldwide recognition.
However, Jortner’s most impressive achievement is undoubtedly his recognition and elucidation of the intramolecular nature of radiationless dissipation of energy in molecules of large and medium size. Based on a simple theoretical model (proposed in 1968 in collaboration with Mordechai Bixon), the basic notions specifying the energy acquisition process, the interstate coupling modes, and the mechanisms of energy disposal, were laid open.
Jortner’s ideas and terminology became seminal to the study of laser chemistry, multiphoton processes in molecules, relaxation phenomena in condensed phases and the dynamics of biophysical systems, and had an indelible impact on the modern development of chemical physics and theoretical chemistry.
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