Yehuda Golahny

Yehuda Golahny was born October 18, 1922, in Balvi, Latvia. In 1935, he and most of his immediate family went to Palestine. He emigrated to the United States in 1947, and became a naturalized citizen in 1955.

In 1949 he married Berta Rosenbaum (1925-2005), an art student at the University of Iowa, 1948-1950; they met at a Detroit school where he taught Hebrew and she taught art. They settled in Newton, Massachusetts in 1954.

As an electrical engineer, he had an illustrious career. He attended the American University in Beirut, 1945-47, and then Lawrence Institute of Technology, Detroit, Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, 1951. In the summer of 1950, he attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he would earn the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1954. Working at  Raytheon Airborne Equipment Operation Division, ITEK Corporation, Mithras Incorporated, and  other companies, he specialized in radar and circuitry.   In 1964 he joined the Instrumentation Group of the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory at MIT, from which he retired in 1987. He designed instrumentation for Lake Shore Cryotronics and for his own company IRICO. He was a lifetime member of IEEE, and served in the organization in several capacities. He served as a consultant for a number of companies, including BTU Engineering Corporation, Harvard Apparatus Company, and MIT. He taught occasionally at Boston University and MIT.

He has been credited with a number of patents and publications in the fields of solid state circuitry, precision measurement and control of temperature, automatic speed control, and nuclear, medical and ultrasonic instrumentation.

In his spare time he designed consumer products: the remote-control WhistleSwitch and LED-based jewelry.

He embraced New England, vacationing in the Berkshires, Nantucket, Maine, and Cape Cod. With Berta, he travelled often to Europe and Israel. He was an alumni donor to MIT, and a donor to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, where Berta taught for many years.

Surviving are his son Fred Ron Golahny, daughter Amy Golahny and son-in-law Richard Kopley, grandson Gabriel Kopley, granddaughter Emily Kopley, her husband Raphael Godefroy, two great-grandchildren, and extended family.

Services at the Beth El Cemetery, 776 Baker St., West Roxbury, Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 2:00 pm.