Zelman (Selmann) Isaak (Yitzhak)
(3 December 1937, Karachev, Oryol region – ?) — mechanical engineer, physicist.
Isaak’s mother, Tsilya Solomonovna (1903, settlement of Lyady, Vitebsk region – 1971, Riga), taught chemistry in secondary school and worked as a district methodology instructor; she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. His father, Genrikh Isaakovich (1900, settlement of Monastyrshchina, Smolensk region – 1995, Ramla, Israel), was a secondary school physics teacher. Before World War II the family lived in Mtsensk, Oryol region, from where they were evacuated to Kazakhstan. In 1943, after the liberation of the Oryol region, they were assigned by the People’s Commissariat of Education to work in the Navlya district of the Bryansk region, where they remained until retirement in 1960.
Isaak Zelman completed secondary school in Navlya in 1954 and graduated with distinction from Bryansk Technical University in 1959. From 1959 to 1963 he worked in Livny, Oryol region, his final position being chief designer at the plant producing equipment for oil depots. In 1963 he moved with his parents to Riga and enrolled in the evening division of the University of Latvia, studying theoretical physics, which he completed in 1970. From 1963 to 1990 he worked at the VEF factory, serving for the last twenty years as head of the design bureau of the Special Department of New Technology (OKTB). He developed various types of automatic equipment, including an automatic coil winder for thermal coils, a wire-processing machine, a sorting automaton, and machines for printed circuit board processing. He held seven USSR author’s certificates (patents) for inventions.
In 1990 Isaak Zelman emigrated with his family to Israel, settling in Ramla in 1992. He studied in various training courses and from 1992 to 1995 worked in a technological greenhouse in Ofakim. In 1995 he started work at Noga Light (now New Noga Light) as a research engineer, where he designed electro-optical instruments.
His wife, Faina (née Shneer) (b. 14 July 1946, Riga), graduated from the Latvian State Conservatory in 1972, specializing in piano. Until 1990 she taught piano at the Riga Pedagogical College. In Israel, from 1995 to 1998 she taught music at a school in Ramla and gave private piano lessons.
Their daughter, Rina (b. 13 February 1979, Riga), studied at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2000–2005), majoring in natural sciences, and works as a programmer at a software company.