Elias Burstein

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/science/elias-burstein-dies-phys...

Elias Burstein, one of the pioneers in the optical physics of solids, whose research into the photoionization of impurities in silicon helped pave the way for the development of silicon semiconductors, died June 17 at his home in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He was 99.

His family confirmed his death.

Mr. Burstein, a physicist, worked for more than seven decades in his field, much of the time as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was one of the first scientists to use lasers to do research on semiconductors and insulators. He held patents for a method to introduce impurities into the otherwise stable element silicon, increasing its semiconducting capacity.

The process, called doping, allows the crystal lattice of silicon to carry more charges, making silicon a much more useful and efficient semiconductor. Doping also reduces the amount of energy needed to change electron states from active to inactive, and back.

occasionally (about one in every 10 million) are produced from a molecule or atom at a different frequency than the ones used to incite them. The process, also known as Raman scattering, often occurs when molecules are in transition to another energy level, making it helpful in analyzing the composition of materials, whether they are gases, liquids or solids.

Mr. Burstein published more than 200 scientific papers. A great deal of his work was in studying crystalline structures, such as rock salt and zincblende, an ore from which zinc is extracted.

He edited and coedited many books, including a series called “Contemporary Concepts of Condensed Matter Science,” published by Elsevier. He was a founder of Solid State Communications, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on solid-state physics, and was its first editor in chief, from 1963 to 1992.

In 1961, Mr. Burstein, along with Robert Hughes, a professor of chemistry, and Robert Madden, a member of the metallurgy department, helped found the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was born Sept. 30, 1917, in Brooklyn to Samuel Burstein and Sara Plotkin. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Brooklyn College in 1938, and a master’s in chemistry from the University of Kansas in 1941.

From 1941 to 1943, he studied chemistry and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working toward a doctorate. But World War II intervened, and he went to work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. He worked in the physics section of the crystal branch division of the laboratory for three years before being promoted to head the division. He stayed there for 10 years before becoming the head of the section for semiconductor research.

He joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania soon after as a professor of physics. In 1982, he succeeded John Robert Schrieffer, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, in the Mary Amanda Wood endowed chair in physics at the university. He retired from the full-time faculty in 1988, but continued as an emeritus professor, often working in the lab with students.

He is survived by his wife, the former Rena Benson; three daughters, Joanna Mitro, Sara Donna and Mimi Burstein; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Burstein was a frequent visiting professor, including in 1974 at Hebrew University in Israel; in 1981 at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden; and in 1996 the University of California, Berkeley.

He was elected in 1979 to the National Academy of Sciences, and received the Frank Isakson Prize of the American Physical Society in 1986. The Isakson Prize citation referred to “his pioneering work on the optical properties of semiconductors and insulators” as well as his studies of Raman scattering.

But while Mr. Burstein received four honorary doctorates (one in technology, from Chalmers, and three in science, from Brooklyn College in 1985, from Emory University in 1994 and from Ohio State University in 1999), he never formally completed his Ph.D.

He never found the time.