Paul Davidovits was born in 1935 in Moldava, a small town in Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). His father died when Paul was not quite three years old. His mother and he then moved back to Humenne, his mother’s home town. Two years later she re-married. They survived the Holocaust by using forged documents, and rapidly moving from town to town whenever anyone appeared to become suspicious of their identities.
By the time WWII ended, all of Paul’s paternal family and most of his maternal family had been killed, including his mother’s second husband. Paul’s mother married the third time, and in 1949 the remnant of the family immigrated to Toronto, Canada. There Paul completed high school and a three-year program in Electrical Technology. After working for a year in industry as an electrical technologist, Paul married, and he and his wife moved to New York City. Here Paul continued his education at Columbia University, receiving the B.S. (1960), M.S. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) degrees in a joint program in Physics and Electrical Engineering. In 1964-1965 he was appointed at Columbia University as Research Associate in Physics and Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. In 1965 he joined the faculty at Yale University as Assistant Professor of Applied Science (1965-1970), and then as Associate Professor (1970-1974). In 1974 he accepted an appointment at Boston College as Professor of Chemistry, a position he retained for 46 years, teaching and conducting research in physical chemistry. From 1994 to 1998 he was Chairman of the Boston College Chemistry Department. During his tenure at Boston College, he was also a consultant for 40 years at Aerodyne Research Inc. in Billerica MA, where together with Aerodyne scientists he studied the basic physico-chemical properties of gas-liquid interactions relevant to atmospheric chemistry and climate change.
After teaching and doing research for 56 years in a variety of fields, including quantum devices, chemical kinetics, medical physics, atmospheric chemistry, and climate change, Davidovits retired from academia on June 30, 2020 as Professor of Chemistry Emeritus. His scientific work is described in 170 publications he has authored or co-authored. He has written two textbooks (one of them currently in its 5th edition), and has co-edited a text on the alkali-halide vapors. He holds three patents. He has received several awards for his work including, together with R. Minsky and D. Egger, the Year 2000, R.W. Wood Prize “for seminal contributions to confocal microscopy”.
He has been married since 1957 and has two adult children. He is an avid hiker as well as a swimmer and a cyclist.
