Professor Yirmiyahu Branover, a world-renowned physicist who spent decades proving to the world that there is no contradiction between cutting-edge science and a life of Torah and mitzvos, and who shared a close and unique connection with the Rebbe, passed away on Monday, 17 Iyar.

He was 94.

Born in Riga, Latvia in 1932, his childhood was shattered by World War II. His father was murdered by Latvian collaborators, and his mother managed to smuggle the family into the Soviet interior before returning to a Riga now absorbed into the USSR.

As a young man, he was denied entry to the academy of his choice due to his Jewish origins – an experience that set him on a path of discovering his Jewish identity. He went on to specialize in magneto-hydrodynamics, the science of generating energy through the movement of liquid metals in magnetic fields, and built an international reputation in the field while still living behind the Iron Curtain.

His transformation from cold Darwinist to fully observant Chassid came through his encounters with the Chabad underground in Russia, particularly through R’ Nota Barkahn, who brought him close to yiddishkeit. By the time he was finally permitted to emigrate to Israel in 1972, he was already keeping Torah and mitzvos in full – beard and all, grown while still in the Soviet Union.

After making aliyah and settling in Beer Sheva, he became a sought-after lecturer across the world – both as a physicist and as a frum scientist who could speak to young Jewish audiences about why science and faith are not at odds.

“I was frequently invited to lecture on science and Torah,” he recalls. “Campus audiences around the globe were extremely interested to hear an internationally renowned scientist reconcile his belief in the Torah with the supposed conflicts emerging from modern science.”

His relationship with the Rebbe defined much of his professional life. On one of his early visits to the United States, the Rebbe told him during yechidus to seek out a professor in Philadelphia who worked in his field.

Branover was skeptical – he knew every name in magneto-hydrodynamics and was certain no one in Philadelphia was involved. He was wrong. After hours of searching with Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, they found Professor Hsuan Yeh at Temple University, who immediately offered to add Branover to the roster of an upcoming international energy convention at Stanford – despite the program already being finalized. Branover declined, eager to return home to Israel.

The Rebbe told him to go. He went. At the convention, he met representatives of the United States Office of Naval Research who offered to fund his laboratory in Beer Sheva. That lab went on to receive millions in grants and earned worldwide recognition.

“I could not have imagined at that point how valuable and far-reaching the Rebbe’s advice had been,” he said.

In another instance, the Rebbe reviewed a highly technical report Branover had submitted – built on extensive computer calculations – and remarked that two numbers were inconsistent. Branover pushed back, noting the calculations had been done by computer using their most advanced theory.

“With all due respect to the experts,” the Rebbe said with a smile, “you will see that there is an error.” It took the research team six months to find it.

In 1985, the Rebbe summoned him and relayed a message he was to bring to contacts in Russia: that with Gorbachev’s rise, a new era of openness was coming, and waves of Russian Jews would soon be making aliyah.

“If I had heard these words from anyone but the Rebbe, I would have dismissed them as fantasy,” Branover recalled.

When Gorbachev visited Israel in 1992, Branover told him what the Rebbe had predicted seven years earlier. Gorbachev was stunned.

“When I assumed power in 1987, I myself had no concrete plan for the future,” he said. “I would like to meet this man who knew so much about the direction which my country and I would follow.”

Beyond his scientific work, Professor Branover headed Shamir, an organization of frum academics from the former Soviet Union, which produced foundational Jewish texts translated into Russian – among the first such books to reach the USSR during the Brezhnev era.

At the Rebbe’s direction, he later oversaw the establishment of a housing project in Yerushalayim to absorb Russian immigrants, and served as editor-in-chief of a three-volume encyclopedia of Russian Jewry. He was also chairman of Mateh Moshiach in Eretz Yisrael.

He received numerous honors over the years, including the prestigious Lady Davis Foundation Prize and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Israel’s Minister of Infrastructure in 2016.

He is survived by his son R’ Daniel Branover of Crown Heights, and grandchildren.

He was predeceased by his wife, Fania Branover AH.

The Levaya will be passing by 770 at 6:30pm on Monday. The Levaya will continue in Yerushalyim on Tuesday.

Yehi Zichro Baruch.

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