| Raphael David Levine |
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Raphael David Levine (March 29, 1938 in Alexandria , Egypt - ) M.Sc., Ph.D., D.Phil., Ph.D.h.c. (mult), AKA Raphy Levine is Max Born Professor of Natural Philosophy at The Hebrew University Of Jerusalem , Israel . Levine is one of the pioneers in the modern theory of chemically reactive collisions and unimolecular reactions. He has played a central role in the application of the principles of quantum mechanics to the description of physical change in a reaction from a microscopic point of view, introducing many new concepts and terms which became standard to this area. His pioneering works include the quantum theory of absolute rates, the first quantal treatment of molecular photodissociation, elucidation of the role of resonances in reactive molecular collisions, the theory of collision - induced dissociation, and (most recently), the foundations of dynamical stereochemistry and the theory of reactions in liquids. Recognizing the insufficiency of the microscopic approach to fully comprehend the dynamics of too complex systems, Levine formulated a novel theoretical method for analysing the dynamical selectivity and specificity of molecular reactions, based on ideas borrowed from thermodynamics and information theory. His "surprisal analysis" (brought forth in 1972 in collaboration with Richard Bernstein and Avinoam Ben-Shaul), became a major analytical tool in the study of reaction dynamics, and spread into diverse branches of science such as nuclear physics and molecular biology. Levine's achievements in applying the ideas of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics culminated in their synthesis in his recent introduction of the algebraic approach to reaction dynamics, based on the maximum entropy principle. This new approach, too, has already gained followers in a variety of fields. Participation in International Scientific Forums :
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