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hevot, Israel — Miraculous
strokes of luck befall most
people not more than once
in a lifetime, if at all.
In the case of Dr. Vera
Lyakhovitsky, such near-mira-
cles happened twice, at both ends
of what she describes as an oth-
erwise "reasonably successful but
pretty ordinary" scientific career.
The first "miracle" occurred in
1952 when Dr. Lyakhovitsky,
then a recent university gradu-
ate in chemistry, was invited to
join an institute affiliated with
the USSR Academy of Sciences
in Moscow — this at the height
of Stalin's anti-Semitic terror,
when trumped-up murder
charges were brought against a
group of Jewish doctors, and
young Jewish scientists could at
best hope for jobs as high school
teachers in remote villages.
The second exceptional event
took place in 1992, when Dr.
Lyakhovitsky was offered a po-
sition at Israel's Weizmann In-
stitute of Science. Such an offer
would be welcomed by many im-
migrant scientists struggling to
find work in their own fields; but
it was no less than miraculous for
Dr. Lyakhovitsky, who was 61
years old at the time and spoke
only Russian.
Unlike many others, she was
able to offer the right skills to the
right people at the right time.
And her age, paradoxically, ac-
tually helped her into the insti-
tute.
Many resumes had passed
through the hands of Professor
David Cahen of the Materials
and Interfaces Department, but
Dr. Lyakhovitsky's stood out. Not
only had she been a ranking crys-
tallographer in Russia, with pub-
lications in the best international
journals in the field, but she had
nearly 40 years of experience in
growing inorganic crystals for
materials research — a painstak-
ing and tricky business where ex-
perience counts no less than
intellectual brilliance.
"I went to my colleagues and
told them, 'Too bad she's only 60
and not older,' because that
would have given her more ex-
perience," Professor Cahen re-
calls.
Dr. Lyakhovitsky has not let
him down. She set up a crystal-
growing lab that now serves the
needs of research groups headed
by three professors — Cahen,
Shimon Vega and Reshef Tenne.
She provides crystals for a vari-
ety of projects, including the de-
velopment of new materials such
as semiconductors for future so-
tar
€1. 2
Dr.Lyakhovitsky
this had to be obtained from oth-
er labs in Israel and abroad and
did not always meet specifica-
tions.
"Vera has opened up possibil-
ities we did not have before, mak-
ing crystals that were previously
simply unavailable to us," Pro-
fessor Cahen says. "She has re-
ally put us on the map in this
area."
Not bad for a scientist who left
her chemistry books behind, nev-
er expecting to use them again,
when she immigrated to Israel in
1991 to join her son and daugh-
ter-in-law. Dr. Lyakhovitsky says
She never expected
to use her books
again.
she is so happy to be working in
her field that she often spends
seven to nine hours a day in the
lab, although the stipend she re-
ceives from the Israel Ministry of
Immigrant Absorption and the
Weizmann Institute stipulates a
four-hour working day. And she
doesn't have any qualms about
making crystals herself, even
though back in Moscow she had
a half-dozen assistants growing
them for her.
She sees her entrance into
Weizmann as no less wondrous
than the beginning of her career.
At the time, she had little hope of
finding work in Moscow, but fate
intervened in the person of a for-
mer lecturer of hers, who had
gone on to becomes president of
the USSR Academy of Sciences
and whom she met accidentally
in the street.
His personal intercession, as
well as a chain of other lucky de-
velopments for which she has no
rational explanation, landed her
a job at the Moscow Institute of
Crystallography.
Because she was Jewish, Dr.
Lvakhovitskv was_notallow_ed_to