Dov Levine

Dov I. Levine (דב לוין, born July 19, 1958) is an American-Israeli physicist, known for his research on quasicrystals, soft condensed matter physics (including granular materials, emulsions, and foams), and statistical mechanics out of equilibrium.

The son of a professor of physical chemistry, Dov Levine grew up in New York.

He graduated in 1979 with a B.S. from Stony Brook University and in 1986 with a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania.

His Ph.D. thesis Quasicrystals: A New Class of Ordered Structure was supervised by Paul Steinhardt.

In 1981, Levine and Steinhardt began developing their theory of a hypothetical new form of matter with icosahedral symmetry (or other forbidden symmetries) that violated the century-old laws of crystallography.

The idea, motivated by their study of Penrose tilings, was to consider atomic arrangements that are quasiperiodic rather than periodic.

They introduced the term quasicrystals, short for quasiperiodic crystal, to describe the idea.

Independently, in April 1982, while studying an aluminum-manganese alloy, A6Mn, Dan Shechtman made a scientific observation, published in 1984, of "a metallic solid which diffracts electrons like a single crystal but has a point group symmetry (icosahedral) that is inconsistent with lattice translations."

When Levine and Steinhardt were shown a preprint, they recognized the diffraction pattern as matching their prediction for an icosahedral quasicrystal and, hence, published their theory and proposed that explanation.

According to Steinhardt:

"Quasicrystals are quasiperiodic structures with an arrangement described by a sum of two or more periodic functions whose periods have a ratio equal to an irrational number; so, they are precisely described like a crystal but in a non-repeating pattern, like a glass."

Levine was from 1986 to 1988 a postdoctoral member of UCSB's ITP (now known as KIPT) and from 1988 to 1989 a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute.

He was from 1988 to 1991 an assistant professor at the University of Florida.

In 1990 he joined the physics department of the Technion, where he is now a professor of physics.

For the academic year 1997–1998 he was a visiting member of UCSB's ITP.

In 2020 he published, with Shankar Ghosh and five other colleagues, research on the development of rechargeable N95 masks.