Karl Rebane (11 April 1926, Pärnu – 4 November 2007, Tartu)[1] was a Soviet and Estonian physicist.

Rebane received a PhD in Solid State Theory in 1955 from Leningrad University and a Doctor of Sciences degree in Theoretical Physics in 1964 from the Institute of Physics of the Belarusian AS at Minsk.

He joined Tartu University in 1955 where he held both teaching and administrative positions, including Professor and Chair of the Experimental Physics Department (1958–60), and Professor and Chair of the Joint Department of Laser Optics at the Institute of Physics and Tartu University (1974–1993).

[4] The war reached Estonia in 1941 and his family evacuated to a small village in the oblast of Chelyabinsk where he worked at the local kolkhoz and attended a school for displaced Estonian children in Verkhneuralsk.

[1] In the spring of 1944, he was called into military service and joined Eesti Laskurkorpus, an Estonian division of the Red Army, where he was a crew member of a 45 mm antitank gun.