Bencion Moyseyovich Vul was born on May, 22, 1903 in Bila Tserkva, Kyiv’s region in a blacksmith’s family.
He took part in Civil war under the leadership of a legendary commander Budyonny. In 1920 he entered the komsomol (The Young Communist League). Vul was organizing various activities for youth. In 1921 he was elected as Secretary of Komsomol City Committee in Bila Tserkva. Komsomol highly recommended him for admission to the KPI on the electrotechnic faculty.
As a student he started doing an academic work. During the preparation of his thesis he was accepted on postgraduate course.
In 1928 Bencion Moyseyovich graduated from the Institute with flying colors. One year after the defence of his thesis on “Gas cleaning by electrical precipitation” he got a job in the KPI.
Fruitful scientific work produced lots of results. In 1930 Vul was recommended to USSR Academy of Sciences on Higher Postgraduate education in Leningrad. From 1931 till 1933 he was working as an assistant to faculty of physics and technology at Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. From 1932 Bencion Moyseyovich was occupying a position of Scientific Secretary in the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LPI RAS), working as a researcher in Abram’s Ioffe laboratory. Abram defined Vul with the following words: “In the name of Bencion Vul we have a physicist, a researcher of different issues concerning technical physics, who makes significant conclusions on the basis of scientific physics analysis.” In 1933 at the suggestion of academician S.I.Vavilova Bencion founded a physics laboratory of dielectrics in LPI. In 1934 USSR Academy of Sciences together with LPI was transferred to Moscow. Under Vul’s supervision the laboratory grew into enormous collective.
In 1935 he defended a thesis on “Dielectric breakdown” and got the degree of Doctor of Physics and Mathematics. In 1933 Bencion Moyseyovich Vul was elected as a corresponden member and in 1972 as a member in USSR Academy of Sciences.
All his further academic work was related to dielectrics and semiconductors. In this field of science he carried out numerous experiments and got fundamentally important results.
His first work was dedicated to aerosol deposition process in electric filters for cleaning smokescreen of thermal power plants and factories. That gave an opportunity to capture the incomplete combustion products, which were imposed in the atmosphere by gases.
In 30s Vul was solving the problems concerning fiber filtration, developed the theory which explains accumulated experimental results and allows to proceed with the development of new high efficiency filters.
He also contributed greatly to the studies of the electric strength of solid dielectrics and gases.
In postgraduate years basing on Abram’s Ioffe suggestion he studied dielectric permittivity of mixture of titanium dioxide (TiO2). The results of that work were published conjointly with Ioffe in “Electricity” magazine in 1931. They were enthusiastic very much and that’s led to experimentation of marginal discharge and influence of the environment on the solid dielectrics breakdown.
While studying the electric strength of dielectrics he discovered a new form of dielectrics breakdown and investigated electrical discharges in gases in homogeneous and heterogeneous fields at different pressures. He also conducted experiments on the solid dielectrics with high permittivity and phenomena in dielectrics with strong gamma radiation.
The experiments on electrical strength of dielectrics having been conducted in 30s developed a scientific foundation for solving numerous technical issues. In 1932 the first textbook "Physics of dielectrics" was published with Bentsion Moyseyovych in the list of the authors.
Vul’s works concerning electrical strength of gases are of the utmost importance for high-voltage equipment. When the high-voltage generator was building the vacuum was used for insulation, but with the view to Bencion’s experiments, the high-pressure gas would have been a better choice.
One of the most significant cycles of work was the study of solid dielectrics with high dielectric insight. It examined thoroughly the main dielectric properties of rutile.
In 1944 B.M.Vul opened a new ferroelectric - barium titanate. This discovery was extremely important for the radio industry.
In 1946 St. Bencion Moyseyovych opened ultra-high dielectric insight of barium titanate.
In 1948 he began a research in semiconductor physics. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union launched the development of semiconductor diodes, transistors and solar cells. Further experiments in the field of photovoltaic phenomena led to the development of silicon phototelements of solar cells. Diffusion transistor was built and the use of p-n-junctions in semiconductors as nonlinear capacitors was suggested.
The research on capacity of p-n-transitions at liquid helium temperatures was also included to this cycle of works. That was the beginning of cryogenic semiconductor electronics.
Under the leadership of Bencion Moyseyovich the LPI laboratory created a semiconductor laser for the first time in in the Soviet Union in 1962.
The need for semiconductor machinery contributed to the development of semiconductor material - cadmium telluride was considered promising for use in radiation detectors and radiation counters and for converters of radiant energy into electricity. Laboratory researched thoroughly the growing crystals process and their electrical and optical properties. Samples of surface-barrier diodes and floatable were manufactured.
The fundamental importance of Vul’s works was valued in the last years when he was studying the conductivity in compensated semiconductors, the experiments were carried out on the basis of gallium arsenide.
Throughout the time B.M.Vul was a head of the laboratory of the Institute and a chairman of the Scientific Council concerning "Physics and Chemistry of Semiconductor" he collaborated with many research institutions in the field of physics of dielectrics, ferroelectrics, and in the physics of semiconductors with almost all institutions of the USSR and the Union republics, universities’ laboratories and industrial scientific research institutes. In 1951 he was appointed as a member of the Main edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, chief editor of "Physical encyclopedic dictionary".
B.M.Vul was the Vice President of the International Union of theoretical and applied physics, member of the executive committee of the European Physical Society, took part in the Pugwash conferences of scientists. His works were published abroad in English, German, French, Czech, Hungarian and Chinese.
For outstanding achievements B.M.Vul was awarded with five Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, the Order "Badge of Honor" and with many medals. In 1964 he was awarded with Lenin and State awards, in 1969 he was awarded with the title Hero of Socialist Labor. The Presidium of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences awarded B.M.Vul with Gold Medal for services to science and humanity.