Professor Cyril Domb, FRS
Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson
Long before he became the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe (the spiritual leader of
the Habad Lubavitch hasidic movement) in 1950, as a young man Rabbi Menahem
Mendel Schneerson received doctoral degrees in the natural sciences,
engineering, and philosophy from the Sorbonne, the Polytechnic Institute of
Paris, and the University of Berlin. These studies were in addition and
secondary to his lifelong immersion in Torah study and Jewish activism.
After his father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitshak Schneerson, the sixth
Lubavitcher Rebbe, moved the center of Habad hasidism from Russia to the
United States, he joined him and started work as a naval architect at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard in highly classified projects that helped defeat Nazi
Germany. Part of the Rebbe's dynamic worldwide struggle against assimilation was to convince modern Jews that science does not negate the truth of the Torah. The correspondence that he initiated with Professor Cyril Domb is just one example of how the Rebbe reached out to millions of fellow Jews, giving guidance and encouragement to live according to the Torah and teach others to do so also.
|
Professor Cyril Domb joined the faculty of King's College, London University, in 1954, after having previously held appointments at Oxford and Cambridge universities in the field of theoretical physics. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, Yeshiva University, the Hebrew University, and the Weizmann Institute. His major scientific interest is statistical mechanics, on which he has extensively published in professional journals. He has edited several volumes on phase transitions and critical phenomena. In London Professor Domb founded the Hovevey Torah organization for adult Jewish education and was president of the British Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. Shortly before making aliyah to Israel, he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society. In Israel, he served in the faculties of Bar-Ilan University and the Jerusalem College of Technology. He coedited Challenge: Torah Views on Science and Its Problems (published by Feldheim in 1976) and was the founding editor of Bekhol Derakhekha Daehu: Journal of Torah and Scholarship (published by the Bar-Ilan University Press).