Emmanuel Rashba

Emmanuel I. Rashba (October 30, 1927 – January 12, 2025) was a Soviet-American theoretical physicist of Jewish origin who worked in Ukraine, Russia and in the United States.

Rashba is known for his contributions to different areas of condensed matter physics and spintronics, especially the Rashba effect in spin physics, and also for the prediction of electric dipole spin resonance (EDSR),[1] that was widely investigated[2] and became a regular tool for operating electron spins in nanostructures, phase transitions in spin-orbit coupled systems driven by change of the Fermi surface topology,[3] Giant oscillator strength of impurity excitons,[4] and coexistence of free and self-trapped excitons.

[5] The principal subject of spintronics is all-electric operation of electron spins, and EDSR was the first phenomenon predicted and experimentally observed in this field.

His father Iosif (Joseph) Rashba was a prominent defence lawyer, a widely educated humanitarian, and his mother Rosalia was a teacher of English.

[7] Rashba's graduation from the university fell onto the last years of Stalin's reign darkened by extreme national chauvinism.

After Rashba's severe case of Guillain–Barré syndrome (1997) his ability to work was facilitated by his wife Erna and the family of his daughter.