Feb 4, 2008 - Lyubov Razdolskaya, 73, of Dimona was killed in a terror attack carried out by a suicide bomber at a shopping center in Dimona. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack and praised it as an "heroic act".
Lyubov Razdolskaya was on her way to the bank at the Dimona commercial center Monday along with her husband, Eduard Gedalin. As they stopped to rest in the winter sunshine, the suicide bomber detonated his bomb. Razdolskaya was killed instantaneously, her husband remains in critical condition at Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba. A police officer shot and killed a second terrorist before he detonated his explosive belt.
Lyubov Razdolskaya was a theoretical physicist who studied sub-atomic particles, like her husband Eduard. Neither is well known in Israel's scientific community. The couple immigrated to the country in the 1990s and settled in Dimona. They participated in Ben-Gurion University's program for absorbing immigrant scientists. Few acquaintances knew that they were talented scientists with decades of research in the Soviet Union behind them, but their colleagues in Be'er Sheva who knew them described them as brilliant scientists who made a significant contribution to particle physics.
The couple came from Tbilisi, Georgia, where they worked at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Georgia, a respected institution in the Soviet Union. Razdolskaya mainly studied cosmic radiation. They were to have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year.
Razdolskaya and Gedalin coauthored several scientific articles, with titles such as "On convergence of the ChPT HFF expansion for one loop contribution to meson production in NN collisions" and "A Chiral Effective Field Theory and Radiative Decays of Mesons."
Prof. Amnon Moalem hired the couple to work in his laboratory at Ben-Gurion University, where they began studying the sub-atomic particles composed of a quark and and anti-quark, known as mesons. "We dealt with reactions among elementary particles that are created with particle accelerators," Moalem explained. "Mesons are a type of particle that doesn't exist in nature. They have to be created artificially. He developed the formulas and she coded, entered the input into the computer and got the output. We worked together for a few years until they retired, in 2000. Their contribution to research was very significant," Moalem said.
Professor Michael Gedalin, the couple’s son, has followed in his parents' footsteps and currently works as a professor in Ben Gurion University’s physics department. Their other son, Konstantin, also a physicist, works in high-tech.
Lyubov Razdolskaya was buried in the new cemetery in Beersheba. She is survived by her husband, still fighting for his life, two sons - Michael and Konstantin - and grandchildren.