DOSTROVSKY, ISRAEL

DOSTROVSKY, ISRAEL (1918– ), Israeli physicist. Dostrovsky was born in Odessa, Russia, and a year later immigrated with his parents to Ereẓ Israel. He studied in London, receiving his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1943, and from that year until 1948 was lecturer in chemistry at the University of North Wales. In 1948 he returned to Israel to join the staff of the Weizmann Institute, where he was head of the Isotope Research Department until 1965 and designed and constructed the isotope separation plant. From 1961 to 1964 he served as senior scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States. From 1965 to 1971 he was director general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. In 1971 Dostrovsky was appointed vice president of the Weizmann Institute and in 1972 acting president and chief executive officer. In November 1973 he was elected president. Dostrovsky made studies of the mechanism of chemical reactions and isotope effects in them and in the mechanisms of high-energy nuclear reactions: high-energy fission, spallation reactions and nuclear evaporation, fragmentation reactions, and nuclear transfer reactions. Later studies focused on solar energy. He founded the Weizmann Institute's solar energy research center, which utilizes unique equipment. He represented Israel in international organizations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Energy Agency, and GALLEX, a program of the Neutrino Astrophysics Group for solar energy. Dostrovsky was a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and the New York Academy of Sciences. In 1995 he was awarded the Israel Prize for exact sciences. (Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)