Rips Ilya Aronovich

Rips grew up in Latvia (at that time part of the USSR), in the family of mathematics teacher Aron Zalmanovich Rips. He was the first Latvian schoolchild to participate in the International Mathematical Olympiad. In eight years, he graduated from secondary school No. 23 (now Lomonosov Gymnasium) in Riga with a gold medal. On April 9, 1969, Rips (at that time a 20-year-old graduate student at the University of Latvia) attempted self-immolation in the center of Riga at the Freedom Monument in protest against the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia[1]. After that, he spent two years in prison, and in 1972, under pressure from Western mathematicians, the Soviet authorities allowed him to emigrate to Israel. A former atheist, Rips later became an Orthodox Jew.

After recovering from his burns and completing graduate school, Rips joined the mathematics department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1979, Rips received the Erdős Prize of the Israeli Mathematical Society.