Background
ABRAHAM IOFFE was born in Rommy, USSR on October 29, 1880.
ABRAHAM IOFFE was born in Rommy, USSR on October 29, 1880.
Specializing in semiconductors, Joffe was appointed professor extraordinary of physics at the Polytechnic Institute in 1913, and was made a full professor in 1915, receiving the prize of the Academy of Sciences.
In 1918 he created the Physical-Technical Institute of Leningrad, which played an exceptional role in the development of physics. As the director of this institution for over thirty years, Joffe took part in the development of physics all over the USSR. He was responsible for an extensive network of physical-technical institutes and laboratories that served as a scientific basis for industrial growth.
After the Bolshevik revolution, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, providing the initiative for founding the Physio-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences in 1951.
He also contributed to the organization of physical-technical institutes in Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Tomsk, and Sverdlovsk, and carefully chose the scientists who formed the nuclei of these scientific bodies.
During a visit to Berlin in 1921, Joffe met Albert Einstein, with whom he also discussed the issue of Zionism. Joffe argued for assimilation as a solution to the Jewish problem.
Joffe’s remarkable personality, his immense scientific prestige and wide erudition, his unquenchable passion for science, his ability to inspire his students, and his rare modesty and affability, won him the admiration of scientists in the Soviet Union and around the world.