Bruria Kaufman
Bruria Kaufman entered the world on the 21st of August 1918 in New York City. Her family belonged to a Jewish community with roots stretching back to Ukraine. The year was 1926 when her parents decided to leave America for the British Mandate for Palestine. They lived first in Tel Aviv before moving to Jerusalem. Young Bruria found herself drawn to two distinct fields during her childhood years. Music and mathematics became her primary interests while growing up in that region.
Kaufman took a position as a research associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton starting in 1948. She worked alongside John von Neumann during the academic year of 1947 or 1948. Albert Einstein joined their circle from 1950 until 1955. This period marked a significant chapter in her professional life. She contributed directly to Einstein's general theory of relativity through this collaboration. The institute provided a unique environment for theoretical physicists to exchange ideas freely.
Lars Onsager published his complex derivation of the two-dimensional partition function in 1944. Kaufman developed an elegant solution based on group theory together with him in 1949. Her approach simplified the original work significantly compared to what had been published previously. She used applied spinor analysis to rederive the result effectively. The three dimensional version of the model remained unsolved even decades later. A conference held by the Physical Society Cambridge International Conference on Low Temperatures featured her transition points paper in 1946.
Zellig S. Harris became her husband in 1941 as a linguist. The couple lived in Pennsylvania after she returned to the US in 1982. Harris died in 1992 while they were living there. Kaufman moved to Arizona following his death. She married Nobel laureate Willis Eugene Lamb in 1996 though their marriage ended in divorce. Bruria Kaufman passed away on the 7th of January 2010 at Carmel Hospital in Haifa. Her body
was cremated according to her wishes after a stay at a nursing home in Kiryat Tiv'on.
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Common questions
When and where was Bruria Kaufman born?
Bruria Kaufman entered the world on the 21st of August 1918 in New York City. Her family belonged to a Jewish community with roots stretching back to Ukraine.
What did Bruria Kaufman work on at the Institute for Advanced Study?
Bruria Kaufman contributed directly to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity through her collaboration starting in 1948. She worked alongside John von Neumann during the academic year of 1947 or 1948 while Einstein joined their circle from 1950 until 1955.
How did Bruria Kaufman solve Lars Onsager's partition function problem?
Kaufman developed an elegant solution based on group theory together with Lars Onsager in 1949. Her approach simplified the original work significantly compared to what had been published previously using applied spinor analysis to rederive the result effectively.
Who were the spouses of Bruria Kaufman throughout her life?
Zellig S. Harris became her husband in 1941 as a linguist and died in 1992 while they were living in Pennsylvania. She later married Nobel laureate Willis Eugene Lamb in 1996 though their marriage ended in divorce.
When and where did Bruria Kaufman die?
Bruria Kaufman passed away on the 7th of January 2010 at Carmel Hospital in Haifa. Her body was cremated according to her wishes after a stay at a nursing home in Kiryat Tiv'on.