Ioffe Binyamin (Binjamin)
(b. 1931, Riga) — research engineer, specialist in electromagnetic mechanics.
In June 1941 Binyamin Ioffe was deported with his family to Siberia, returning in November 1954. He graduated with distinction from the Krasnoyarsk Mechanical Technical School in 1951 and, by correspondence, from the Riga Polytechnic Institute in 1961. He received his Candidate of Technical Sciences degree in 1969.
From August 1951 he worked at a factory in Krasnoyarsk, later served in the army, then worked as an engineer in Riga. He became head of the mechanisation department at the RĒZ factory, and from 1962 was an engineer, junior researcher, and later senior researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR.
In 1980 Binyamin Ioffe emigrated with his family to the United States, where he worked as a designer and head of a design bureau in several companies. From 1991 he was a researcher in the scientific division of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and from 1997 a research scientist in the Department of Aerospace Research and Communications at ITT Industries Corporation.
Together with academician I. M. Kirko, under his overall supervision, Ioffe developed methods of controlling the force interaction of electromagnetic fields with bodies of various shapes and properties. These formed the basis of new non-contact methods of controlling the position of mechanical components, which were used in the automation of production processes in instrument- and machine-building across the USSR and abroad.
In the United States, he continued developing new design methods, including novel magneto-mechanical bearings of his own invention. Mechanisms using these bearings allowed for simpler construction, greatly reduced vibration and wear, and met the demanding requirements of the semiconductor and aerospace industries. His methods were applied at INTERSERV, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and ITT’s Department of Aerospace Research and Communications to improve spacecraft control systems — notably for the Cassini spacecraft — as well as NASA equipment for weather satellites and other space programmes.
Ioffe is the author or co-author of more than 100 inventions in the USSR and 130 patents in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and other countries. He published over 50 articles in leading scientific journals and 5 books.
He was awarded the title of Honoured Inventor of the Latvian SSR (1967), the First Prize of the Latvian Academy of Sciences (1972), and the State Prize of the Latvian SSR (1974). NASA awarded him Certificates of Recognition (1996, 1997, 1998, 2002). In 2000 he was made an honorary doctor of science (honoris causa) of the Latvian Academy of Sciences in physics. In 2005 the Latvian Academy of Sciences and the Patent Office awarded him, together with his co-author R. Kalniņš, the Walter Zapp First Prize for a series of inventions in electromagnetic recognition and orientation of bodies (EMAGO), which gained international recognition among scientists and engineers in the USA, the UK, Germany, and beyond.