Walter Lewin

Walter Hendrik Gustav Lewin (born January 29, 1936) is a Dutch astrophysicist and retired professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lewin earned his doctorate in nuclear physics in 1965 at the Delft University of Technology and was a member of MIT's physics faculty for 43 years, beginning in 1966 until his retirement in 2009.

Lewin's contributions to astrophysics include the first discovery of a rotating neutron star through all-sky balloon surveys and research in X-ray detection in investigations through satellites and observatories. Lewin has received awards for teaching and is known for his lectures on physics and their publication online via YouTube, MIT OpenCourseWare, and edX.

In December 2014, MIT revoked Lewin's Professor Emeritus title after an MIT investigation determined that Lewin had violated university policy by sexually harassing an online student in an online MITx course he taught in the fall of 2013.

Lewin was born to Walter Simon Lewin and Pieternella Johanna van der Tang in 1936 in The Hague, Netherlands. He was a child when Nazi Germany occupied The Netherlands during World War II. It is unclear if his paternal grandparents Gustav and Emma Lewin, who were Jewish, were killed in Auschwitz in 1942 or died of typhus or starvation. According to a YouTube video by Walter Lewin, his parents were killed in Auschwitz.

To protect the family, Lewin’s father — who was Jewish, unlike his mother — decided one day to simply leave without telling anyone. His mother was left to raise the children and run a small school she and her husband had started together. After the war ended, his father resurfaced; Lewin describes having a “more or less normal childhood.” His parents continued running the school, which he says strongly influenced his love of teaching.