Veniamin Grigorievich (Benjamin) Levich (russian: Вениами́н Григо́рьевич Ле́вич; 30 March 1917 in

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

– 19 January 1987 in

Englewood, New Jersey Englewood is a city in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which at the 2020 United States census had a population of 29,308. Englewood was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from por ...

, United States) was a

Soviet dissident Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term ''dissident'' was used in the Soviet Union in the period from the mid-1960s until ...

, internationally prominent physical chemist, electrochemist and founder of the discipline of physico-chemical hydrodynamics. He was a student of the theoretical physicist,

Lev Landau Lev Davidovich Landau (russian: Лев Дави́дович Ланда́у; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet- Azerbaijani physicist of Jewish descent who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. His a ...

. His landmark textbook titled ''Physicochemical Hydrodynamics'' is widely considered his most important contribution to science. The

Levich equation The Levich equation models the diffusion and solution flow conditions around a rotating disk electrode (RDE). It is named after Veniamin Grigorievich Levich who first developed an RDE as a tool for electrochemical research. It can be used to predic ...

describing a current at a rotating disk electrode is named after him. His research activities also included gas-phase collision reactions,

electrochemistry Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference, as a measurable and quantitative phenomenon, and identifiable chemical change, with the potential difference as an outco ...

, and the quantum mechanics of electron transfer. Levich received many honors during his life, including the

Olin Palladium Award The Olin Palladium Award (formerly the Palladium Medal Award) was established by The Electrochemical Society (ECS) in 1950 and is presented every 2 years to recognize outstanding contributions to the fundamental understanding of all types of electro ...

The Electrochemical Society The Electrochemical Society is a learned society (professional association) based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of electrochemistry and solid-state science and related technology. The Society membership compris ...

in 1973. He was elected a foreign member of the

Norwegian Academy of Sciences The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Univer ...

in 1977 and a foreign associate of the U.S.

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 1982. He was also a member of numerous scientific organizations, although on leaving the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

in 1978 he had to relinquish his Soviet citizenship and, therefore, was expelled from the

USSR Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

. An interdisciplinary institute at the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

is named in his honor. His son Eugene V. (Yevgeny) Levich also became a physicist, leaving the Soviet Union in 1975 and raising support for other family members.

See also

References

Further reading