After the university was officially opened, he became the chairman of the physics group for several years, acting from his seat at Utrecht.

The known mathematician, Abraham Fraenkel, who was on the governing board and served later as dean and rector of the university, invested great efforts looking for an excellent physicist to take the chair of theoretical physics in Jerusalem.

Both had to leave their posts in Germany due to the new racial laws, in spite of being highly appraised experimental physicists there.

Felix Bloch, Eugene Wigner and Fritz London considered the offer seriously, everyone in his turn, after they had to leave their positions in Europe.

This work was carried out in Jerusalem in complete scientific isolation during the years of World War II.

In Jerusalem, Nissan Zeldes, who became the world expert in the theory of nuclear masses, and Gideon Rakavy.

Two of Racah's students, Amos de-Shalit and Igal Talmi, became the world leaders in theoretical nuclear spectroscopy.

In 1950 William Low (Ze'ev Lev), who was a student of Charles Townes in the United States, joined the experimental physics.

In the early sixties his interests shifted to the newly discovered Mossbauer effect, and established a research group which turned Jerusalem into a world center in this field.

Many graduates of the Racah Institute (and the physics departments which preceded it) became leading professors and scientists (including a Nobel Laureate) in Israel and all over the world.

Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli, Robert Oppenheimer, John Wheeler and Stephen Hawking, to mention just a few.

Another direction of research includes statistical physics applied, for example, to reaction diffusion systems, especially in cases where fluctuations have an important effect.

On the experimental side, benefiting from the facilities of the Harvey M. Krueger center for nanoscience and nanotechnology, researchers apply modern measuring and fabrication techniques to study the physics of nano-structures, their application to quantum information processing, the interaction of light and matter, high-Tc superconductivity, and the physics of electron glasses.

Josephson junctions are being studied in order to expose and optimize the conditions that allow for long-lived macroscopic quantum coherence, and to clarify the processes that lead to noise and decoherence.

The Nonlinear and Statistical Physics group pursues extensive theoretical and experimental studies, trying to understand the behavior of complex non-equilibrium systems.

Another topic of research is the theory of dynamical control of ion traps and Nitrogen vacancies in Diamond.