Mikhail Izrailevich Rabinovich (born April 20, 1941, Nizhny Novgorod) was a Soviet and American theoretical physicist specializing in oscillation and wave theory, dynamical chaos, turbulence theory, and the physics of classical nonlinear fields; he held a doctorate in physics and mathematics, was a professor, and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He died on March 31, 2025, in San Diego, California, USA, where he had lived since moving there in 1992; he was buried there as well.[1] He was born into the family of the prominent chemist Izrail Beniaminovich Rabinovich; the first half of his scientific career was entirely tied to Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky).[1]

Education and early career in Gorky

In 1962 he graduated from the Faculty of Radiophysics, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, immediately entered postgraduate study, and began teaching at the Department of Oscillation Theory. His academic supervisor was Andrey Viktorovich Gaponov-Grekhov, a student of Andronov Alexander Alexandrovich. In 1967 he defended his candidate's dissertation, "Self-Oscillations of Distributed Systems," and in 1974 his doctoral dissertation at the academic council of the Institute of Physical Problems; in that work he laid the foundations of a new direction in nonlinear dynamics — self-oscillatory and autowave processes in distributed nonlinear nonequilibrium media.[1]

From the founding of the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Rabinovich headed the nonlinear dynamics sector. In 1979, together with Anatoly Fabrikant, he described what became known as the Rabinovich–Fabrikant system — a set of three coupled ordinary differential equations exhibiting chaotic behavior for certain parameter values.[3] He was awarded the title of professor in 1980.[1] He concurrently remained a professor in the Department of Oscillation Theory at the radiophysics faculty of Gorky State University, where he taught a course on oscillation and wave theory. His lectures formed the basis of the textbook "Introduction to the Theory of Oscillations and Waves" (1984), co-authored with Professor D. I. Trubetskov (1938–2020); an English translation was published in 1989 under the title "Oscillations and Waves in Linear and Nonlinear Systems." In 1986 he co-authored the chapter "Turbulence" in the third edition of Volume VI of the Landau–Lifshitz course of theoretical physics.[1]

Academic recognition and work in the United States

In 1991 he was elected a USSR. In 1992 he accepted an invitation from the Institute for Nonlinear Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he led research into the nonlinear dynamical properties of neural systems: in close collaboration with biologists and mathematicians, he turned to studying the spatiotemporal dynamics of large neural networks and the cerebral cortex. In 1993 his first American book, "Introduction to Nonlinear Dynamics for Physicists," was published, followed in 2000 by the monograph "The Dynamics of Patterns." During the 2000s, Rabinovich introduced the principle of spatiotemporal coding of sensory information in living systems — subsequently confirmed by experimental data — and proposed the concept of the "stable heteroclinic channel" to describe robust transient processes in neural networks.[3][1]

Connection with Nizhny Novgorod science

From 2008, Rabinovich was a member of the Nizhny Novgorod Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2013 he publicly spoke out against the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[1] The field of nonlinear neuron dynamics that he founded became one of the central directions of the Division of Nonlinear Dynamics and Optics of the IAP RAS in Nizhny Novgorod; at the institute, experimental projects were carried out under his supervision — chaotic dynamics in nonlinear electronic circuits, spatiotemporal disorder in parametric Faraday ripples, and the transition to chaos in thermal convection. Rabinovich trained a significant number of postgraduate students and young scientists working in the field of nonlinear neuron dynamics.[1]

Sources

  1. names52.ru — Rabinovich Mikhail Izrailevich — Mikhail Izrailevich Rabinovich died on March 31, 2025, in San Diego, California, USA, where he had lived since moving there in 1992; he was also… (archive)
  2. museum.unn.ru — On April 20, 2021, Mikhail Izrailevich Rabinovich turns 80 — Museum of Lobachevsky University (archive)
  3. eduspb.com — RABINOVICH Mikhail Izrailevich — Saint Petersburg Teachers' Association — In 1979, together with Anatoly Fabrikant, he described what became known as the Rabinovich–Fabrikant system… (archive)