On 13 April 1969, a graduate student at the University of Latvia named Eliyahu Rips attempted self-immolation to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Bystanders extinguished the flames, but the act led to his incarceration by Soviet authorities. Following international petitions, he was released in 1971 and later immigrated to Israel to continue his mathematical career.
Academic Contributions to Geometry
Rips completed his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1975, focusing on the dimensional subgroup problem. As a professor at the university, he specialized in geometric group theory, publishing extensively on the Burnside problem, small cancellation rings, and properties of free and torsion-free groups. In the early 1990s, he formulated the Rips machine, an unpublished technique used to understand group actions on R-trees. He frequently collaborated with Zlil Sela on the structure and rigidity of hyperbolic groups.
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In the late 1970s, Rips began using computers to search for patterns in the Torah. He co-authored a 1994 paper in Statistical Science titled Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis with Doron Witztum and Yoav Rosenberg. The work claimed to identify encoded messages within the text. Although journalist Michael Drosnin used these findings as the basis for his 1997 book, The Bible Code, Rips later characterized Drosnin's interpretation as unreliable. Critics, including mathematician Brendan McKay, argued that such patterns are statistically expected in any large body of text.
Professional Recognition and Later Years
Throughout his career, Rips received several honors, including the Anna and Lajos Erdős Prize in Mathematics in 1979 and the Aharon Katzir Prize. He served as a sectional speaker at the 1994 International Congress of Mathematicians. In 1997, he was among those awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature for the Bible code research. Rips died on 19 July 2024 at the age of 75 in Jerusalem, survived by his wife, Dvorah, five children, and over thirty grandchildren.
Fast facts
- Born: 1948, Riga
- Died: 19 July 2024, Jerusalem
- Education: University of Latvia, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Primary Field: Geometric group theory
- Key Award: Anna and Lajos Erdős Prize (1979)
- Citizenship: Soviet Union, Israel
- Languages: English, Russian, Hebrew
Questions readers ask
What was the Rips machine?
It was an unpublished technique developed by Rips in the early 1990s to analyze group actions on R-trees.
Did Rips maintain his support for the Bible Code book by Michael Drosnin?
No, while he initially agreed with the findings, by 1997 he described Drosnin's book as being on shaky ground and of no value.
Achievements
- Affiliated with Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Educated at University of Latvia and Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Worked as mathematician and university teacher
