Vaserman Yekutiel Borukhovich (1907-1995)

Vaserman (Wassermann)Yekutiel Borukhovich (6 November 1907, Beshenkovichi, Vitebsk Region – 7 November 1995) — mechanical engineer, lecturer.

In 1912, Vaserman family moved to Riga. He graduated from the municipal Jewish gymnasium in 1925 and, while working concurrently, completed his degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Latvia in 1936. He held a Candidate of Technical Sciences degree from 1956 and was appointed Associate Professor in 1958.

Yekutiel Vaserman worked as an accountant and engineer, and from 1940 to 1941 served as director of the Kemsia textile factory in Riga. He was a war veteran, awarded six orders and medals. After his demobilisation in 1947, he returned to Riga and worked as an engineer at a textile plant.

From 1949 to 1974, he was a lecturer, later an associate professor, at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Riga Polytechnic Institute (RPI). From 1959 to 1962, he served as Deputy Dean and then Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.

In 1974, he emigrated to Israel. Between 1975 and 1984, he was Professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva.

He published numerous scientific works — over 25 in leading Soviet journals and, post-1975, in international publications such as the Journal of Sound and Vibration, Israel Journal of Technology, and NASA Journal. His research focused on noise control and studies of vibration and stability. He also invented several devices, including one for measuring the physico-mechanical properties of fibrous materials under repeated bending.

In 1990, he published a Hebrew-language textbook on theoretical mechanics titled Statics in Israel.

Vaserman was one of the main figures in the so-called 1961 case of “Jewish bourgeois nationalists”. As a result of this politically motivated investigation, he was dismissed from his leadership position at RPI.