TALMI, IGAL

TALMI, IGAL (1925– ), Israeli physicist. He was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to Palestine the same year. On leaving school he joined the Palmaḥ after which he studied physics under G. Racah . Sponsored by the newly formed Israel Atomic Energy Commission, he worked with W. Pauli at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (1949–52) followed by a research fellowship at Princeton University, U.S. (1952–54). From 1954 he was a member of the department of nuclear physics of the Weizmann Institute of which he was appointed director (1967); he became professor emeritus. Talmi's research concerned nuclear structure and the manner in which protons and neutrons of nucleons are held together despite the electrostatic repulsion of the positively charged protons. He developed the shell model in which nucleons move in orbits within the core of the nucleus determined by interactions with other nucleons. This model is supported by theoretical and experimental data in good agreement. He continued to work to support his description of the shell model with further physical data. He was awarded the Israel Prize for exact sciences (1965), jointly with his collaborator amos de-shalit , and was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)