Benjamin Abeles (23 June 1925 – 14 December 2020) was an Austrian-Czech physicist whose research in the 1960s in the US on germanium–silicon alloys led to the technology used to power space probes such as the Voyager spacecraft.
His honours include the 1979 Stuart Ballantine Medal and his induction into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame (1991).
[2] In July 1939, aged 14, he was one of hundreds of Jewish children brought from Prague to London through the efforts of British humanitarian Nicholas Winton, an example of the various Kindertransport missions that saved many such children from the impending dangers of World War II and the Holocaust.
[4] Following the award of his PhD, Abeles worked in Israel on germanium electronics before moving to the United States to carry out research in Princeton for the Radio Corporation of America.
[2] For their work, Abeles and Cody received the 1979 Stuart Ballantine Medal (Engineering) from the Franklin Institute,[6] and were inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991.