Berlman Isadore

by Isadore B. Berlman

Isadore B. Berlman was born in St. Louis MO. USA, January 13, 1922. Berlman completed his A.B. degree in Meteorology at NYU through the US Army. He served 3[math]\tfrac{1}{2}[/math] years in the US Air Force as a Meteorologist (1943-1946). He completed his MA in Physics(1946-1948) and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics (1948-1950) both at Washington University, St. Louis MO.

1950-1970 worked at Argonne National Laboratory in the Radiological Physics Branch researching organic scintillation solutions.Being a nuclear physicist he saw the advantages of building radiation detectors using aromatic compounds.

1971-1991 worked as a Professor of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he taught Physics and continued research on organic scintillation solutions. In 1977-1990, during summer vacations, he consulted at EG&G in Goleta, CA.

Comments by I.B. Berlman:

Since I have not kept up with the literature I can only comment on my work as I remember it. Noting that I am 95 years old and of failing memory.

One comment concerns my book “Handbook of Fluorescence Spectra of Aromatic Molecules”[1] second edition (1970). I believe that the fluorescence decay times recorded therein are very accurate even though they are in the nanosec range. This was possible as I chose a digital technique instead of an analogue one. My assistant Orville Steingraber designed and built the system as described in our article.[2]

When Prof. Förster (Förster Theodor) visited my laboratory at the Argonne National Lab and saw the equipment in operation he said something like, “that’s the way how to measure fluorescence decay times”. As far as I remember everyone else was working in the microsec range. At that time, the digital technique began to be used in other fields such as photography, etc.

My second comment concerns my collaboration with a chemistry graduate student, S. Gershuni, and two members of the Chemistry Department, Professor I. Agranat and Professor M. Rubinovitz. Our study was to investigate the effects of adding substituents to known fast scintillators to lower their melting point to below room temperature, i.e. to the state of an oil. These substituents were not to interfere with favorable fluorescence characteristics. The results of this work are given in article.[3]

Several fluorescent oils were reported in this paper, mainly substituted P-terphenyls. Their fluorescence characteristics were measured by exciting them with UV radiation. Their quantum yield was between 90-100% and their fluorescence decay time was about 1 nsec. As an aside, it would have been interesting to excite one of these oils with ionizing radiation such as gamma rays. I have not kept up with the literature concerning these compounds to learn if any further progress in fluorescence has been achieved.

My third comment, concerns my working as a consultant at EG&G in Goleta CA. My contact there was Dr. John Flournoy. Occasionally the two us would cooperate with Prof. B. Rickborn and one of his students in the Chemistry Department at the University of California in Santa Barbara. The chemicals involved were fluorescent. An example of such a collaboration is [4].

My final comment is the most difficult. It concerns my second book, “Energy Transfer Parameters of Aromatic Compounds” Academic Press 1973. There is a high probability that the data is faulty. My problem now arises from the fact that as I am 95 years old and my memory is failing. Examples of memory loss have been as follows: recently some-one sent me the following reprint [5]. Not only did I not remember being involved with ”fulvenes”, I also forgot that Richter was a graduate student of mine. Regarding the book, I believe that results there may be wrong. My memory tells me that around 1970-73 I was interested in finding a formula that gives a value for the transfer distance between 2 molecules where the absorption spectrum of one of them overlaps the emission spectrum of the second one. I seem to remember such a formula appeared in an article written by J. Birks (Birks John Betteley) and someone else. To my chagrin when I examined the formula more closely, I concluded that it was faulty. Therefore, I decided to wait until they published a correction but I have not seen such a correction. Forgetting this I went ahead and used this formula. Years later I realized my mistake but did not know how to correct this. Moreover, I was surprised to learn that I had not referenced this article. I tried to find the original article on the internet but to no avail. On the other hand … there is a formula in the Introduction (page 68 of Energy Transfer Parameters of Aromatic Compounds I.B. Berlman) which I apparently used, it looks like a standard formula found in many articles on energy transfer. If there is nothing wrong with this formula, the data in the book should be correct. At my age, I am not in the position to verify this. Finally, if the data is incorrect and has caused any harm, I apologize.

References

[1] Berlman, Isadore. Handbook of florescence spectra of aromatic molecules. Elsevier, 2012.

[2] O. J. Steingraber and I.B Berlman Rev. Sci. Instr. 34, 524 (1963). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0029554X73903522

[3] The Effect of Substituents on the Melting Point and Spectroscopic Characteristics of Some Popular Scintillators”. (S. Gershuni, I. Agranat, M. Rubinovitz and I. B. Berlman) J. Phys. Chem. 84, 517 (1980).http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/j100442a013

[4] Tetraphenylbutadienes Via (1, 1 Diphenylallyl) lithium. Barbara M. Simes, Bruce Rickborn, John M. Flournoy and Isadore B. Berlman. J. Org. Chem. 53, 4613.

[5] Solvent effects on the absorption of fluorescence spectra of Diphe-nyltriafulvenes. “3 Modes of Dipole Moment Variation upon Excitation”. Y Richter, I B Berlman and I Agranat. Chem. Phys. Letters 49 238 1977. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0009261477805770-->