Background
Fain was born to a Jewish family in Kiev. His father was a mathematician.
Fain was born to a Jewish family in Kiev. His father was a mathematician.
After the end of the war the family stayed in Dushanbe, where Fain graduated from school. He graduated there summa cum laude.
He instilled in the child a love for science as well as a strong national sentiment. During the Second World War the family was evacuated and changed location several times. He became a student in the Moscow Institute of Energetics.
During his first year in Moscow he visited synagogue and attempted to learn the Hebrew and Yiddish languages.
Fain was strongly impressed by the historical visit of the first Israeli ambassador to Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, Golda Meir. Fain managed to transfer in 1950 to the Faculty of physics in Gorky University.
Academic Fain successfully started his scientific career, and already in 1965 became a professor in his alma mater. He wrote several scientific books translated into English and German.
In 1966 he moved to Moscow and started successful work in the Institute of Solid State Physics in Chernogolovka.
Starting from 1972 Fain gradually started to participate in a Zionist movement. He took part in refusenik scientific seminar, and also in Samizdat. He applied for exit visa to Israel in 1974 and became a refusenik.
He also became unemployed after dismissal from his work on political grounds.
In 1976 Fain initiated a sociological research on Soviet Jewry. An attempt to organize an international symposium on the subject was foiled by the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security), which closely watched all his steps from then on.
After several arrests, searches, interrogations and a hunger strike Fain finally arrived in Israel in 1977. Fain published his study on Jewish identity of Soviet Jews with the American sociologist Mervin Verbit.
Fain and Verbit published their findings in 1984 through the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
He continued to struggle to improve the life of Soviet Jews and also continued his scientific work in Tel Aviv University in the fields of quantum electronics, lasers and condensed matter. After retirement Fain wrote his first philosophic book in Hebrew: "Creation Ex Nihilo", where he analyzes the relationship between religion and science. lieutenant was published in Hebrew as well as in English and Russian translations.
The Russian version of the book also has an autobiographic part to lieutenant
In 2008 Fain completed another book in Hebrew: "Law and Providence". lieutenant was published in 2011 in English by Urim Publications.
In January 2011 Fain"s third book Hebrew: «דלות הכפירה» («Dalut Ha"kfira» («The Poverty of Secularism») was published by Hebrew: Mosad Ha"rav Kook.