Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Action at a distance
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Stan's Mathematica notebooks document his later work and speculations

Helga at the Theodor Herzl School
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Amid the chaos of the Nazi period, the Zionist school in Charlottenburg taught skills and values that lasted a lifetime

Mössbauer man—Stan makes his mark in physics
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Stan's innovations in Mossbauer spectroscopy.

Rabbi Spektor's true genealogy
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Most of what we discovered about Rabbi Spektor's genealogy was entirely true. All but the myth of our family's connection to it

Sputnik in the backyard
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Watching Sputnik at night from our back yard in a suburb of Pittsburgh is one of my earliest memories.

The physics experiment that went wrong
  • 1951 - 1958

How and why did Stan Ruby's important post-graduate research go wrong, and what impact did it have on his career in physics?

The problem with anti-ballistic missiles
  • October 6 1968 - March 10 1969

Stanley Ruby entered the public debate over nuclear missile technology in 1968-69.

The Rubys in Israel—1961 sabbatical
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Our family’s amazing year of discovery and connection

Walter Ruby and the Carioca Cooler
  • 1933 - 1938

The U.S. liquor industry took off after the repeal of Prohibition. Walter Ruby was the marketing manager for the American Spirits company

Yichus and our relation to the famous rabbi
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Walter thought he had proved the family legend of descent from the celebrated Kovno Rav, Rabbi Yitchak Elchanon Spektor. Later facts emerged that suggested a more tenuous connection.