Draft:Reuven Opher

Reuven Opher was an astrophysicist, researcher and professor, who worked at universities in Israel, Brazil and the United States. A pioneer in astrophysical plasma research in Brazil, where he worked between 1982 and 2014 at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of São Paulo (IAG-USP).

Biography
Reuven Opher was born Raymond Fox in the Bronx, New York on July 17, 1932, the youngest son of Bertha (born Bracha Rosenfeld) and Maurice Fox (whose original name was Moshe Foxon) who emigrated from Russia. He married Barbara while studying for his doctorate, at the age of 22.

In 1954 he immigrated to Israel and changed his name to Reuven Opher. In 1978, Opher and his family immigrated to Brazil for his work. After his wife was diagnosed with meningioma, the Opher couple returned to the United States in 2011, in order to join their daughters.

On November 28, 2020, Reuven Opher died in his hometown of New York at the age of 88. He left behind his twin daughters Merav Opher, Professor of Astronomy at Boston University, and Michal Lipson, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University.

Career
In 1958 he received his doctorate in nuclear physics from Harvard University, under the guidance of Nobel Prize winner Professor Norman Ramsey. His research topic was the angular and energy distribution of low-energy protons from targets bombarded by high-energy protons.

After completing his doctorate, Opher worked in the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and at the same time was also the lead cantor at the synagogue in Berkeley. In 1954 he started a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute, after which he was invited to participate in the establishment of the Technion's physics department. Between 1962 and 1982, Opher was a researcher at the Technion, where he also became a full professor. Starting in 1978, he spent several sabbaticals in research in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1982, he moved to the Department of Astronomy at IAG at the University of Sao Paulo, where he worked until his retirement as a full professor in 2002. Opher continued to teach at the institution until 2014. In 2015, he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus at IAG. At the end of his life he returned to academia in the United States, at Columbia University.

Reuven Opher led research in the field of plasma astrophysics which he created at IAG, in addition to his research in turbulent magneto-hydrodynamics, cosmology and universe studies. This research helped unravel several problems regarding accretion disks, galactic winds, star formation, particle acceleration. At IAG, he supervised 13 doctoral theses and 3 master's theses, in addition to supervising 7 additional doctorates in Israel. Most of his former students became professors in various institutions in Brazil and abroad.

Throughout his career he published about 160 scientific articles in international journals, in addition to abstracts and conference papers. He initiated a series of informal conferences such as New Physics in Space (since 2002) and Challenges of New Physics in Space (since 2008) aimed at the Brazilian audience.