Eugene Levich

Early life and education

Levich was born in 1948 in Moscow, the son of Veniamin Levich. He obtained an M.Sc. in Physics in 1968, from Moscow State University and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics in 1970. Levich has published over 100 papers and book chapters in the fields of plasma physics, astrophysics, phase transitions, nonlinear phenomena & chaos, turbulence in fluids and plasma and geophysics. He also holds over 40 patents in fundamental fields of technology, ranging from managing of turbulent drag and heat exchange in turbulent flows to new generation of optical storage.

In 1972 he applied for an exit visa to leave to Israel, was denied permission to emigrate and joined the refusenik movement. Levich spent one year in a labor camp in the Siberian Arctic. He was released in 1974 after international struggle and support from the West.

Scientific career

In 1975 Dr. Levich immigrated to Israel and worked till 1978 as a Senior Scientist at the Department of Nuclear Physics of the Weizmann Institute. In 1979-1980 he was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Physics of Harvard University.

In 1981 Dr. Levich became Associate Professor and in 1985 Professor of Theoretical Physics and Professor of Engineering at the City University of New York where he served till 1991. In 1982-1985 he was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and Visiting Professor at Tel-Aviv University.

Dr. Levich is known as the author who discovered, together with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, the phenomenon of Bose condensation in radiation and what is known now as one of the most important mechanisms of interaction between plasma and radiation in astrophysical conditions (MBH environs, quasars, pulsars and radio sources). His later works (together with V. Yakhot) paved way to a new direction in the theory of phase transitions-kinetics of phase transitions.

From 1982 on Dr. Levich was working on the theory of turbulence in fluids and plasma. He discovered and predicted, in parallel with Professor of Cambridge University H.K. Moffatt FRS, totally unexpected structure and fundamental properties of turbulent flows in fluids and plasma that have bearing in particular on the all important issue of turbulence management and control in fluids and plasma.

In 1991-1996 Dr. Eugene Levich was Chief Scientist of Orlev Scientific Computing, a Division of Ormat Industries Ltd., Israel. Orlev gathered together a group of distinguished Israeli and US scientists trying to implement Levich’s concept of turbulence control in industrial environment. However, the technological limitations of those years made difficult unambiguous confirmation of all the aspects of the theory. It was only 25 years after the first publication of the theory by Levich in 1983, that the theory found decisive support in independent experimental, observational, theoretical, and numerical studies, carried out in particular at NCAR (Boulder, Colorado), Cambridge University, Los Alamos and other scientific centers.

From 1996-1998 Dr. Levich was President and Chief Scientist of a private company Constellation Memory Devices Ltd. - developing general principles of new generation of optical storage-multilayer disks and cards and transmission of large amount of video data by Internet.

In 1999- 2002, Dr. Levich was President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Constellation 3D, Inc., a NASDAQ company, that developed an original technology of fluorescent optical storage for application in consumer electronics (High Definition TV and Digital Cinema) and professional storage market, which later declared bankruptcy.

In 2002-2005 he was an independent Consultant to several companies developing new generation of optical storage based on multilayer concept

Dr. Eugene Levich served from 2005 until 2008 as Director and CTO of NME Inc., US public company which, like Constellation 3D, was working to bring multi-layer DVD-like disks to market with high storage capacities but production costs similar to DVDs due to being industrially compatible with existing manufacturing infrastructure.

Contributions to modern science

Dr. Levich and his team created and implemented totally novel technological principles for industrial production of large capacity carriers of information, optical discs in particular. These principles can be equally implemented for applications with red lasers and blue lasers, for pre-recorded replicated discs and recordable discs. Parts of the technology were implemented at first in the world replication production line manufacturing 2, 3 and 4 layers optical discs (up to 20GB capacity red laser discs) built by the joint team of NME Inc. and VDL ODMS. This production line was unveiled to public in Eindhoven, Netherlands, on 22 January 2008.

In 2008-2009, Dr.Levich summarized the work that lasted for many years in the field of turbulence, which might be one of the most important discoveries in modern physics. This major work, Coherence in Turbulence: New Perspectives, was published in July 2009.This work has implications, in particular, for nuclear fusion technologies.

Afterwards, Dr. Levich started working in a new commercial project in the field of nuclear fusion technologies. However many scientists in the world connect the works and concepts launched by Dr. Levich to a diversified list of natural phenomena, such as: Plasma turbulence in solar wind, solar granulation, clustering of galaxies, heating of matter in Quasars, pulsars, radio sources, Seyfert galaxies, and Bose condensation.

Publications

• Levich, Yevgeny (1976). "Soviet dissidents: trying to keep in touch". Nature. 263 (5576): 366–367. Bibcode:1976Natur.263..366L. doi:10.1038/263366a0.