Family of Jewish physicist Benjamin Abeles, who was on a Kindertransport as a teen and became an activist to help refugees in his 80s, donates archive to University of Southampton
LONDON — Benjamin Abeles’s pioneering research helped power the spacecraft used in some of NASA’s most daring interstellar missions, including the Voyager program that probed Jupiter and Saturn.
But, as a teenager, the renowned Jewish physicist was forced to flee Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and spent part of World War II working odd jobs and living in air-raid shelters in London.
Abeles’s life and scientific achievements were marked at a June 13 event at the University of Southampton, in the south of England, to which his family has donated a treasure trove of photos, letters and documents.
