Oded Regev is a physicist and astrophysicist, professor emeritus of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology and best known for his theoretical application of fluid dynamics and dynamical systems theory to astrophysics.
Education
Polish born, emigrated to Israel in 1958 and his academic career was mainly in Israel: studies of Physics and Mathematics at the Hebrew University, graduate studies and Doctor of Philosophy at the Tel-Aviv University and Faculty membership at the Technion.
Career
During his studies he served 4 years in the Israel Defense Forces and continued to serve in the reserve units, reaching the rank of a Major. In 2002 he moved to the United States of America. His early numerical calculations (with G Shaviv) of a rotating gas sphere gravitational collapse (1980) were the first to show that a central object (a star) is formed surrounded by a proto-planetary disk-like nebula, provided turbulent viscosity is included. Together with J.R. Buchler he found a simplistic model of a stellar oscillator that exhibited chaotic pulsation.
This oscillator was later found to be related to the Moore-Spiegel oscillator.
Was among the discoverers of the advection dominated accretion flows (ADAF) which became a very popular idea in modeling accretion disks around black holes. In his later years he concentrated on theory of accretion disks applying novel, in astrophysics, mathematical approximation methods.
Investigated instabilities of accretion disks that may give rise to angular momentum transport, excluding the possibility that the magneto-rotational instability may develop beyond linear stage in thin, very low magnetic Prandtl number (which such structures usually are), disks. A new comprehensive graduate textbook: Modern Fluid Dynamics for Physics and Astrophysics, written with O. M. Umurhan and P. Yecko is about to appear in early 2015, published by Springer Verlag.
Authored alone or in collaboration with other authors several books, edited by Cambridge University Press (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom) and by VDM publishing.