Benjamin Levich, Scientist and Soviet Emigre, 69, Dies

Benjamin Levich, believed the highest-ranking Jewish scientist ever to be given permission to leave the Soviet Union and emigrate to Israel, has died at the age of 69.

The internationally famous physicist was a resident of Fort Lee, and died Monday at Englewood Hospital.

Levich was the focus of international attention in 1972, when he first applied for exit visas for himself and his family.

He quickly was fired from his academic and research posts at Moscow University. He also had been chairman of the Institute of Electro-Chemistry in the Soviet Academy of Scientists and was the only academy member ever allowed to leave the country. After he left he was expelled from that body because he had given up his citizenship.

Scientists from around the world asked the government to let the family emigrate and in 1978, after a six-year struggle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), while on a visit to the Soviet Union, successfully pleaded for his release .

Levich was allowed to emigrate to Israel, where he became an engineering professor at Tel Aviv University.

He joined City College of New York in 1979, and was an Albert Einstein professor of science and director of the Institute of Applied Chemical Physics there.

Levich was known for his research in a broad range of scientific fields including physics, electrochemistry, fluid mechanics, chemical engineering and heat transfer.

“The most fitting memorial to Prof. Levich would be an intensification of efforts to open the gates for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who yearn to leave the Soviet Union for freedom,” said Jerry Goodman, executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, in a statement after Levich’s death.