Eliyahu Rips: Difference between revisions

| caption = Rips in 2017

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1948|12|12|df=y}}

| birth_place = [[LatviaRiga]], [[Latvian SSR]], [[USSR]]

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2024|07|19|1948|12|12|df=y}}

| death_place = [[Jerusalem]]

| known_for = [[Small cancellation theory#Applications|Rips construction]]<br/>[[Rips machine]]<br />[[Vietoris–Rips complex]]<br />[[Torah Code]]

'''Eliyahu Rips''' ({{lang-he|אליהו ריפס}}; {{lang-ru|Илья Рипс}}; {{lang-lv|Iļja Ripss}}; born 12 December 1948 – 19 July 2024) iswas an Israeli [[mathematics|mathematician]] of Latvian origin known for his research in [[geometric group theory]]. He became known to the general public following his coauthoringco-authoring a paper on what is popularly known as [[Bible code]], the supposed coded messaging in the Hebrew text of the [[Torah]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.kmph.com/story/16664855/kmph-special-report-bible-codes-2012 |title=Secret Codes In The Bible And The Torah? Investigators YES! - KMPH FOX 26 |date=2 February 2012 |work=[[KMPH-TV]] |accessdateaccess-date=28 February 2012}}</ref>

Ilya (Eliyahu) Rips grew up in [[Latvia]] (then part of the [[Soviet Union]]). His mother was Jewish and from [[Riga]], the only of nine siblings that survived the war; the others were killed in [[Rumbula massacre|Rumbula]] and other places. His father Aaron was a Jewish mathematician from [[Belarus]]; his first wife, children, and all of his relatives were killed during [[the Holocaust]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://satori.lv/raksts/11284/Lolita_Tomsone/Serkocins_Ripss |author=Lolita Tomsone |title=Sērkociņš Ripss |publisher=Satori |language=Latvianlv |date=23 May 2016 |accessdateaccess-date=30 December 2016 |archive-date=31 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160531133553/http://satori.lv/raksts/11284/Lolita_Tomsone/Serkocins_Ripss |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Rips was the first high school student from Latvia to participate in the [[International Mathematical Olympiad]]. In January 1969, he learnt from listening to Western radio broadcast--- — then illegal in the USSR--- — of the [[self-immolation]] of Czechoslovak student [[Jan Palach]]. On 13 April 1969, Rips, then a graduate student at the [[University of Latvia]], attempted [[self-immolation]] in a protest against the [[Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia|Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia]]. After unwrapping a self-made slogan condemning the occupation of Czechoslovakia he lit a candle and set his gasoline-soaked clothsclothes ablaze. A group of bystanders werewas able to quickly put the fire out, resulting only in burns to Rips' neck and hands. Though injured, he was first taken to the local KGB office and interrogated. He was incarcerated by the Soviet government for two years. After his story spread among Western mathematical circles and a wave of petitions, Rips was freed in 1971. The following year, he was allowed to [[aliyah|immigrate]] to [[Israel]].

Rips joined the Department of Mathematics at the [[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]], and in 1975 completed his Ph.D. in mathematics there. His topic was the dimensional subgroup problem. He was awarded the [[Aharon KarzirKatzir Prize]]. In 1979, Rips received the [[Erdős Prize]] from the Israel Mathematical Society, and was a sectional speaker at the [[International Congress of Mathematicians]] in 1994.

Rips iswas a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Hebrew University. His research interests arewere geometric and combinatorial methods in infinite group theory. This includes small cancellation theory and its generalizations, (Gromov) hyperbolic group theory, Bass-Serre theory and the actions of groups on <math>\mathbb R</math>-trees.

{{mainMain|Bible code}}

In the late 1970s, Rips began looking with the help of a computer for codes in the Torah. In 1994, Rips, together with Doron Witztum and Yoav Rosenberg, published in the journal ''[[Statistical Science]]'' an article, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis", which claimed the discovery of encoded messages in the [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] text of the [[Book of Genesis]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.nzz.ch/2004/08/18/ft/article9PRR2.html |title=Botschaften des Allmächtigen oder zurechtgeschusterte Daten? |date=2004-08-18 August 2004 |work=[[Neue Zürcher Zeitung]] |accessdate=2012-02access-date=28 February 2012 |url-status=dead |archiveurlarchive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080122041752/http://www.nzz.ch/2004/08/18/ft/article9PRR2.html |archivedate=2008-01archive-date=22 January 2008}}</ref> This, in turn, was the inspiration for the 1997 book ''[[The Bible Code]]'' by journalist [[Michael Drosnin]]. While Rips originally claimed{{citation needed|date=October 2019}} that he agreed with Drosnin's findings, in 1997 Rips described Drosnin's book as "on very shaky ground" and "of no value."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1997/06/08/seek-and-ye-shall-find.html |title=Seek And Ye Shall Find |author=Sharon Begley |date=8 June 1997-06-08 |work=[[The Daily Beast]] |accessdateaccess-date=2012-02-28 February 2012 |archiveurlarchive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120508055008/https://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1997/06/08/seek-and-ye-shall-find.html |archivedatearchive-date=8 May 2012-05-08}}</ref> Since Drosnin's book, [[Bible code]]s have been a subject of controversy, with the claims being criticized by [[Brendan McKay (mathematician)|Brendan McKay]] and others.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://cs.anu.edu.au/people/bdm/dilugim/torah.html |title=Torah Codes |website=cs.anu.edu.au |access-date=2016-07-24 July 2016}}</ref> An early supporter of Rips' theories was [[Robert Aumann]], Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics 2005, who headed a commission overseeing Rips' experiments attempting to prove the existence of a secret code from God in the [[Torah]]. Eventually, Aumann abandoned the idea and withdrew his support from Rips.

''[[The Bible Code]]'' treats the text of the Bible as a [[word search]] puzzle: for example, a word may be spelled diagonally moving in a north west direction, or perhaps left-to-right taking every second letter. The more patterns that are allowed, the more words that can be found. Elementary statistics can be used to estimate the probabilities of finding certain hidden messages. The statistician [[Jeff Rosenthal|Jeffrey S. Rosenthal]] shows in his book ''Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities''<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNX7cRhWVi0 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/GNX7cRhWVi0 |archive-date=21 December 2021 |url-status=live|title=Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities |website=YouTube |access-date=2016-12-20 December 2016}}{{cbignore}}</ref>{{page number needed|date=October 2019}} that "hidden messages" are statistically expected and hence should not be seen as divine messages, much less as predictions of the future. Mathematician [[Brendan McKay (mathematician)|Brendan McKay]] illustrated this point by finding messages in the English text of ''[[Moby Dick]]'' that supposedly "predicted" famous assassinations of the past, such as the [[assassination of John F. Kennedy]] and the [[assassination of Indira Gandhi]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/codes/moby.html |title=Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick! |author=Brendan McKay |date=1997 |access-date=6 October 2019-10-06}}</ref>

The 1997 "[[Ig Nobel Prize]] for Literature" was awarded to Eliyahu Rips, Doron Witztum, Yoav Rosenberg, and [[Michael Drosnin]], for their work on [[Bible codes]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The 1997 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony |url=https://improbable.com/ig/miscellaneous/ig-97.html#winners |access-date=22 July 2024 |website=improbable.com}}</ref>

* {{Cite journal |first=E. |last=Rips |title=Group actions on '''R'''-trees |workjournal=preprintPreprint}}

* {{Cite journal |lastlast1=Rips |firstfirst1=E. |last2=Sela |first2=Z. |title=Structure and rigidity in hyperbolic groups. I |journal=Geom. Funct. Anal. |volume=4 |year=1994 |issue=3 |pages=337–371 |doi=10.1007/bf01896245|s2cid=119386239 }}

* {{Cite journal |lastlast1=Rips |firstfirst1=E. |last2=Sela |first2=Z. |title=Canonical representatives and equations in hyperbolic groups |journal=[[Inventiones Mathematicae|Invent. Math.]] |volume=120 |year=1995 |issue=3 |pages=489–512 |doi=10.1007/bf01241140|bibcode=1995InMat.120..489R |s2cid=121404710 }}

* {{Cite journal |lastlast1=Rips |firstfirst1=E. |last2=Sela |first2=Z. |title=Cyclic splittings of finitely presented groups and the canonical JSJ decomposition |journal=[[Annals of Mathematics]] |series=2 |volume=146 |year=1997 |issue=1 |pages=53–109 |doi=10.2307/2951832|jstor=2951832 }}

* {{Cite journal |lastlast1=Sapir |firstfirst1=Mark V. |last2=Birget |first2=Jean-Camille |last3=Rips |first3=Eliyahu |title=Isoperimetric and isodiametric functions of groups |journal=Annals of Mathematics |series=2 |volume=156 |year=2002 |issue=2 |pages=345–466 |doi=10.2307/3597195|jstor=3597195 |arxiv=math/9811105 |s2cid=119728458 }}

* {{Cite journal |lastlast1=Birget |firstfirst1=J.-C. |last2=Ol'shanskii |first2=A. Yu. |last3=Rips |first3=E. |last4=Sapir |first4=M. V. |title=Isoperimetric functions of groups and computational complexity of the word problem |journal=Annals of Mathematics |series=2 |volume=156 |year=2002 |issue=2 |pages=467–518 |doi=10.2307/3597196|jstor=3597196 |arxiv=math/9811106 |s2cid=14155715 }}

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/biblecodetrans.shtml The Bible Code], transcript of a story which aired on ''BBC Two'', Thursday 20 November 2003, featuring comments by Drosnin, Rips, and [[Brendan McKay (mathematician)|Brendan McKay]].

[[Category:20th-century1948 mathematiciansbirths]]

[[Category:21st-century2024 mathematiciansdeaths]]

[[Category:20th-century Israeli mathematicians]]

[[Category:Latvian21st-century Israeli mathematicians]]

[[Category:IsraeliScientists Jewsfrom Riga]]

[[Category:SovietAcademic Jewsstaff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem]]