Playwright Yehoshua Sobol, founder of the "Edi" organ donation association Deborah Ben-Dror, Nobel laureates Prof. Aharon Chechanover and Elie Wiesel; And seven other scientists, leaders and economists will be awarded honorary doctorate degrees on behalf of the Weizmann Institute of Science
Yehoshua Sobol / Israel
Yehoshua Sobol is one of Israel's leading playwrights, a well-known writer and director. His plays - which are successful around the world - focus on key aspects of Israeli culture, the Holocaust, the Zionist enterprise and the Israeli-Arab conflict. Sobol, born in Israel (1939), was active in the socialist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, and lived in a kibbutz from 1957-1965. In the years 1965-1969 he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he received a degree in philosophy.
His first play, "The Coming Days", was presented in 1971 at the Haifa Municipal Theater, where he was subsequently employed (1984-1988) first as a playwright, and then as joint artistic director.
Sobol's international career began in 1983, when the Haifa production of his play "Jewish Soul" was invited to participate in the Edinburgh Festival. His most famous work, "Ghetto" (1984), one of the three plays about the Vilnius ghetto that make up the "Ghetto Triptych", won praise in various parts of the world. In Israel, "Ghetto" received the Kinor David Award for the best play.
Sobol wrote more than 50 plays. Many of them were presented in Europe and the United States and received critical acclaim. In 2005, his play "Eyewitness" was performed at the Mark Taper Forum Theater in Los Angeles. In 2006 this play was performed at the Finborough Theater in London.
Elie Wiesel / USA
Elie Wiesel's statement, "To remain quiet and indifferent is the greatest sin...", can be used as a testimony to his life and work. He was born in 1928 in the village of Sighet, which is now in the territory of Romania, and was deported from there at the age of 15 together with his family. He survived four camps, but his parents and younger sister perished.
After spending several years in an orphanage in France, Wiesel studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, and eventually became a journalist at Yedioth Ahronoth. During an interview with the writer Francois Mauriac, the latter convinced Wiesel to write about his experiences in the death camps. The result was the memory book "Night" (La Nuit), which became known around the world and was translated into more than 30 languages. Following this work, he wrote more than 40 fiction and non-fiction books dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust - the literal meaning of the word in Greek as a victim by fire, a concept he used to describe the Jewish experience in World War II - and the moral responsibility to fight hatred, racism and extermination.
Wiesel's life is dedicated to putting his views into practice. He was appointed chairman of the US President's Committee on the Holocaust, which was assigned the task of planning the American commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust. In 1980, he was the founding chairman of the American Holocaust Remembrance Council.
Ahead of his previous visit to Israel at the Nobel laureate event held at the Technion in May 2008, Wiesel was interviewed by the Hadaan website and read For scientists to avoid collaborating with dangerous regimes.
Deborah Ben Dror / Israel
Deborah Ben Dror knew how to turn a personal tragedy into a life-saving enterprise. She was the driving force behind the Odi association, within which she has been promoting organ transplantation for the past 30 years. Hundreds of Israelis today owe their lives to her perseverance and dedication.
The Edi association is named after Deborah's late son, Ohud (Odi), who suffered from end-stage renal failure. For two years he waited for a kidney transplant, but until a suitable kidney was found, his condition deteriorated until he was no longer able to withstand the complications that resulted from the transplant surgery. He died in September 1978 at the age of 28.
During his hospitalization, Eddie shared with his parents, Shmuel and Deborah, his dream of establishing an organization dedicated to promoting awareness of the importance of organ transplantation, and encouraging people to carry a card declaring their willingness to donate their organs in the event of death. Eddie's dream was in his will, and on the 30th day after his death, his parents, the fifth generation of Petach-Tikva farmers, announced the founding of the Eddie association.
The Edi association, which currently has about half a million card-carrying members, continues to raise public awareness in Israel of the importance of organ donation and promote legislation in this area. This year the association helped pass two relevant laws in the Knesset for this purpose.
Professor Aharon Chakhanover / Israel
Prof. Aharon Chachanover, together with Prof. Avraham Hershko, deciphered the process of breaking down proteins in living cells. The mechanism they discovered is based on the ubiquitin molecule, which attaches to a damaged or ineffective protein, thereby marking it as destined for destruction. This pioneering research clarified how the cell controls various key processes such as cell division, DNA repair, and quality control of new proteins. When decomposition does not function properly, the result is disease. This discovery led to important progress in the study of the mechanisms of action of malignant diseases, diseases of the immune system such as asthma, hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis, and diseases that affect the nervous system and the brain, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. This work won the two scientists together with Prof. Irwin Rose from the USA the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Aharon Chachanover is a professor with special status for research at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. In 1974 he completed his medical studies at the Hadassah School of Medicine and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After completing his military service as a combat medic, he was a doctoral student of Prof. Avraham Hershko at the Technion, where, in 1981, he was awarded a Doctor of Science degree.
- For the interview given by Prof. Chechenover to Scientific American following his winning the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- The State of Israel has dropped education from its agenda - a lecture given by Chechenover at the Technion
Ernst Kramer / Germany
Ernst Kramer embodies in his character what was known in the past as the "Jewish-German synthesis". The aspiration of European Jews for a life of dignity and creativity in an open and tolerant society is a soul's desire that requires constant reinforcements even today, and it is what motivates Ernst Kramer.
Kramer was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1913, and in 1938 was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1939 he immigrated to the USA. After the attack on Pearl Harbor he joined the US Army and returned as an American soldier to Europe, where he learned that his parents and younger brother perished in the Holocaust. After participating in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in April 1945, he joined the military government established in Germany after the war, and worked for the restoration of a free press and cultural life.
His journalistic career began in 1948, when he was appointed deputy editor of an American German-language magazine called Die Neue Zeitung. In 1958 he joined Axel Springer's publishing house as deputy editor of the daily newspaper Die Welt, and then, until Springer's death in 1985, was his closest political and professional partner. In 1981, Kramer was appointed editor of Welt am Sonntag, a member of the supervisory committee of the publishing house, and chairman of the Axel Springer Foundation.
Robert Joseph Drake / Holland
Robert Drake combines a successful professional career in international trade and transportation with a long-standing commitment to the Jewish community in the Netherlands and Israel.
From 1998 he served as chairman, vice chairman and member of the board of directors of "Nidra Holdings" in Rotterdam, an international group for trade and transport, founded in the 20s of the last century, and his grandfather was one of its founders. His professional training included positions in Hamburg, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires. He speaks English, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese and Spanish.
In addition to his work in business, Drake supports various philanthropic activities in the Netherlands, including the Bnei Brit office and the group of friends of the Israel Cancer Society, which he founded and headed since 1990. Bob Drake is a member of the second generation of donors to the Weizmann Institute of Science. He has been a member of the Board of Directors since 1999 and the Executive Committee since 2002, the year in which he was elected Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.
For the past 15 years, the Drake family has contributed generously to the Weizmann Institute of Science, establishing chairs in the fields of immunology and nanotechnology, and injecting various research funds. Drake had a significant part in raising funds in the Netherlands for the institute, as well as organizing the donations for the construction of the "Duck" auditorium at the Davidson Institute for Science Education.
Professor Peter Goldreich / USA
Prof. Peter Goldreich is one of the most important theoretical astrophysicists of our time. His work encompasses a wide variety of phenomena, including the study of orbits of bodies in the solar system, spiral arms of galaxies, radio radiation jets, physics of pulsars, solar seismology, planetary rings and magnetic storms. The asteroid 3805 Goldreich is named after him.
Prof. Goldreich received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics (1960) and a Doctorate in Physics (1963) from Cornell University. After a year of postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, in 1964 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles UCLA, and two years later he was appointed to the faculty of the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH), where he worked for 36 years. In 2002 he retired from this institution and joined the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, where he continues to work today.
Prof. Goldreich has been invited as a guest lecturer at leading institutions such as Cornell University, the Smithsonian Institutions in Washington, the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT.
Prof. Goldreich visited Israel several times, and hosted many Israeli colleagues who are now leading astrophysicists. In 1986, he was a guest lecturer in the Amos de Shalit lecture series at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Donald L. Kirk / Canada
Donald Kirk, born in Montreal, is a member of the third generation of residential home builders. He founded the "Kirk" corporation, marketed under the name "Kirk Houses", and builds new residences in the Chicago area. From 1975, the Kirk Corporation, under the management of Donald Kirk, built more than 10,000 housing units in this area.
Donald Kirk began his impressive career in the field of construction in 1948 as a draftsman and supervisor in the service of an architectural firm. He advanced quickly, in 1961 he was appointed general manager of the LDC company, which built the town of Lorraine, a suburb of Montreal. In 1972, Kirk was appointed president of the "Meridian" company, a national housing company, based in New York. Over the next three years, the company built approximately 10,000 housing units in Florida, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, as well as in London, England.
Kirk began his active involvement in the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2004. Since then, he has been donating generously to the institute, and in August 2006 he established the Center for the Research of Childhood Cancers and Immune Disorders named after Kirk. As a token of appreciation for his generosity, Kirk was invited to join the prestigious "President's Circle" of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, and in November 2007 he was elected to the Institute's International Board of Directors.
Lori Y. Lockey / USA
Lori Lockey, a passionate supporter of education and science, recently gave the Weizmann Institute of Science an extremely generous donation. This donation funds two notable initiatives: the construction of the Lori Lockey Pre-Clinical Research Building and the Biochemical Science Research School.
The building for pre-clinical research, the only one of its kind in Israel and one of a handful in the entire world, is the largest building on campus for central research services, and is distinguished, among other things, by the variety and sophistication of the imaging capabilities it makes available to researchers. The research that will be conducted in the building will encompass the entire spectrum of medical research, and will include research in the fields of cancer, genetic disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, bone and muscle development, and disorders of the immune system.
Born in Portland, Oregon, Lori Lockey graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Journalism. A successful career in journalism and public relations on the West Coast led him, in 1961, to the launch of the corporation "Business Wire", a company for news distribution services in San Francisco with an investment of $2,000. When he sold the business in 2006, the value of the company was estimated at 500 million dollars.
Lockey retired from "Business Wire" in 2008. Now he devotes more time to his investments in order to continue making important contributions to educational institutions.
Professor Helmut Schwartz / Germany
Prof. Helmut Schwartz is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of molecular chemistry, and an authority in policy-making in the fields of science and technology. He is mainly interested in the chemistry and physics of molecules in a gaseous medium; in chemical reactions involving catalysts; in the creation and dissolution of metal-based chemical bonds; and in electron transfer processes.
Schwarz studied chemistry at the Berlin University of Technology, where, in 1972, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree. In 1978 he was appointed a professor in the theoretical and practical fields of mass spectroscopy, and in 1983 - a full professor of organic chemistry. In the years 1989-1990 he was the dean of the Faculty of Sciences at this university. Prof. Schwartz was one of the founders of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities of the Berlin-Brandenburg district, and in the years 1998-2003 he served as its vice president. In the years 2001-2007 he served as vice president of the German Research Foundation DFG, an autonomous organization at a national level, which promotes research in universities and other research institutions financed by public funds in Germany, and fosters collaboration between scientists.
In January 2008, Schwartz was president of the Humboldt Foundation. He served as a visiting professor at leading research institutions in Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Australia, Austria, Japan and New Zealand, as well as at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Rabbi David Hartman / Israel
Rabbi David Hartman, a Jewish philosopher and author of international reputation, is the founder and director of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, an institution for research and leadership training, which strives to revive Judaism, strengthen Jewish identity and foster religious pluralism, while emphasizing the centrality of the revival of the State of Israel, as a source for both challenges and opportunities.
Hartman was born in Brooklyn, New York and studied at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin and Yeshiva Lubbitch. In 1953 he received his rabbinical certification from Yeshiva University. In 1960 he received an MA in philosophy from Fordham University, and after serving as a community rabbi in New York, held a similar position in Montreal. At the same time he taught at McGill University, where he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in 1968.
Hartman immigrated to Israel with his wife, Barbara, and their five children, in 1971. In 1976, he founded the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem to encourage greater understanding between Jews belonging to different sects, and to help build a more tolerant Israeli society.
For more than two decades, Hartman served as a professor of Israeli thought at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In the years 1977-1984, he was an advisor to the Minister of Education Zevlon Hamer, and served as an advisor to several prime ministers on issues of religious pluralism in Israel and the ties between Israel and the Diaspora.
