Benton Seymour Rabinovitch

1919 - 2014

Benton Seymour Rabinovitch

Prof. B. Seymour Rabinovitch

February 19, 1919 - August 2, 2014.

Benton Seymour Rabinovitch, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, passed away peacefully on August 2. He was a distinguished scientist, beloved husband, father and grandfather, and a remarkable man. He was born in Montreal, Canada in 1919. His mother Rochelle came as a teenager from Botosani, Romania, and in Montreal met her future husband Samuel, who himself emigrated from Bessarabia. The youngest of Rachel and Samuel's seven children, he attended McGill University, earning both his baccalaureate and doctoral degrees by the early age of twenty-three. He immediately volunteered to join the Canadian Army, serving as Captain in the Chemical Warfare Defence Laboratory from 1942 to 1946. He led a team of young scientists on the European Front, studying German munitions factories and battlefields as the Axis powers retreated and looking for violations of the Geneva Convention on Weaponry.

After the War, Dr. Rabinovitch was awarded a Milton Fellowship and a Royal Society of Canada Fellowship enabling him to conduct post-doctoral studies in physical chemistry at Harvard University. Dr. Rabinovitch joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington (UW) in 1948. He married Marilyn Werby of Boston in 1949, and they made their home in Seattle. They had twenty-four years of joyful marriage, raising four children. After Marilyn's untimely death in 1974, Professor Rabinovitch married Flora Reitman of Montreal, Canada in 1980, and together they enjoyed over thirty-four years of loving marriage, pursuing many mutual interests, including extensive travel.

Professor Rabinovitch taught and pursued research as a UW faculty member for nearly four decades. In his research career, he was a virtuoso of experimental physical chemistry; his work provided the first experimental verification of important theories of molecular dynamics and energy transfer within molecules in the gas phase. He received numerous prestigious awards for his scientific contributions, including the Peter Debye Award of the American Chemical Society and the Polanyi Medal of the Royal Society. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, London. In 1991 he received an honorary doctorate of science from the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology. He served as an editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and was Chairman of the Division of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. He mentored numerous students over the years, and forty-one students earned the Ph.D. under his guidance. In 2005 the University established the B.S. Rabinovitch Endowed Chair of Chemistry in his honor.

After his retirement in 1986, Professor Rabinovitch explored a passion for silver serving pieces (especially fish slices) and their chemistry, publishing three authoritative volumes on this subject. In 2000, he was inducted into the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, London -- a rare honor for someone not born in England. His personal collection of contemporary commissioned silver serving slices is now part of the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In recent years, he authored a children's storybook, Higgledy Piggledy: A Tale of Four Little Pigs, based on an original tale he told his children when they were young. Professor Rabinovitch was a continual inspiration to his family and to all who knew him. His generosity, kindness, warmth, philanthropy, and charm will be cherished. He is survived by his beloved wife Flora, children Peter (Jacqueline), Ruth (Thomas), Judith (Tim), Frank (Karen), stepchildren Howard (Ramona) and Ellen Reitman, as well as 12 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren. There will be a private service. Remembrances to the Department of Chemistry, University of Washington.