Bekefi, George

Dates

• Existence: 1925 March 14 - 1995 August 17

Biographical Note

George Bekefi, 1925-1995, was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1925. He later relocated to England during the German occupation as part of the Britain's effort to rescue Jewish children. He received a BSc in physics from the University of London, and a PhD, 1952, from McGill University. Bifeki then continued to work at McGill as a lecturer and later assistant professor until 1957.

In 1957, Bekefi began research in the Center of Gaseous Electronics in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). He joined the MIT faculty in 1961 and taught classes in Physics, including 8.02 and 8.03. Bekefi authored the monograph Radiation Processes in Plasmas (Wiley, 1966), coauthored Electromagnetic Vibrations, Waves and Radiation (MIT Press, 1977), and edited the text Principles of Laser Plasmas (Wiley, 1976).

In 1989, he was awarded the IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Award and in 1993, he was Gold Medal for Merit in the Field of Physical Sciences from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Bekefi was a fellow of the American Physical Society, and served as chairman of its Division of Plasma Physics in 1978.

Bekefi was also involved with research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, CERN Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), and MIT's Plasma Fusion Center. His research interests included electromagnetism, the effects of wave diffraction on aberrations of optical systems, and relativistic electron beams.

Bekefi died on August, 17, 1995, at the age of seventy following a fight with leukemia.

Adapted from Resolution on the Death of George Bekefi Faculty Meeting October 18, 1995 (Enclosure B).

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