"Physics comes in handy anytime, anywhere, because physics teaches you chutzpah." That was one of the opening sentences Jacob Guedalia heard at the Weizmann Institute while on his first interview. "In physics, you step up to the universe and say, 'I know nothing about you, but I'm going to reveal your mysteries and do things that have never been done before,' " states Guedalia. "Being an entrepreneur in the business world is the same."
Bridging the distance between physics and the business world comes naturally to Guedalia, who believes that hi-tech and tradition are complementary, that failure provides the stamina for success, and that the Weizmann Institute provided him with his business skills.
"In the Weizmann Institute's Feinberg Graduate School, I got a chance to see how really excellent people work," he says. He was only one step away from not being accepted at all. "I went completely blank during my interview. The interview lasted three hours instead of the usual half-hour. The professors told me to say something, anything about physics, so they could figure out if I knew the subject at all. It takes chutzpah to study at Weizmann." Finally, Guedalia was informed he should do courses as an external student, and on the basis of his grades, he was later accepted as a graduate student.
Guedalia's M.Sc. in physical optics would later provide a basis for his companies' technology. His objective: to shorten the time it takes to transmit images across networks. In other words, no more twiddling your thumbs as you wait for your computer to download visuals from the Internet. This would enable on-line commerce, and video phones could work over plain old telephone lines. He's accomplishing this by translating the concept on which holograms are based into computer-readable language. (See below.)
The technology of one Guedalia venture was licensed to Microsoft; the second is the Jerusalem-based OLiVR. OLiVR technology gave birth to a union between Guedalia and John Sculley of Live Picture, Inc. [Sculley is former CEO of Pepsico and Apple Computer.]
"I wake up in the morning with an idea, and then set out to see if it works much like a physicist in academia. It's all about creating new worlds," says Guedalia.
And keeping in touch with traditional roots. Guedalia defines himself as orthodox, keeps kosher, and observes shabbat. "No contradiction," he says. "In Yeshiva University, where I did my undergraduate studies, we'd study Gemara half the day and physics the other half. The idea was that both make you complete."
"I definitely think I have more companies in me. I'd love my next company to be in Israel." But isn't America the marketplace for big business? "Israel is second only to the Silicon Valley in technology. In chutzpah, vision and opportunities, Israel is number one."
Holograms: Less is More
If photographic images are based on pictures of images as they are, then holograms are a way to produce a picture based on the diffraction, or breaking up of light into the color spectrum. For example, if you were to take a picture of a cat with your camera, the cat obviously would have to be there for its image to appear on film. However, a hologram of the cat is produced by merely recording the patterns of light diffracted from it. A feature of holography is that only a fraction of the diffraction information is required to reconstruct the complete holographic image. If the same concept could be used in computers, that would mean less data for your computer to store. The "lightweight" (meaning less processing and storage space required) images would then be free to race across your screen.
A Genetic Predisposition to Science
Science is in Prof. Lia Addadi's genes. Her maternal great-grandfather was an avid collector of all types of shells, and his collection, which is considered one of the most comprehensive in the world, is now on display at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Addadi, through her research on the complex relationship between proteins and crystals, studies how mollusks form their shells. But her research has provided a bridge to her great-grandfather in more ways than one.
"My great-grandfather was a civil engineer who developed an interest in a number of different areas, including shells," says Addadi, Head of the Weizmann Institute's Structural Biology Department. "My mother remembers looking with her grandfather at shells through a microscope."
Though he had decided to donate the collection to the University of Padua, Addadi's great-grandfather changed his mind after World War II. But he forgot to tell Addadi's great-grandmother where it should go instead. Shortly after he died in 1951, she decided to send it, as Addadi would later find out, to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Addadi was born in 1950 in Padua, Italy. "Even as a child, I was interested in how things are on the inside. My interest began with the human body, but I found that anatomy was simply not enough -- I wanted to know things in greater detail. This led to my interest in chemistry and eventually brought me to the area shared by biology and structural chemistry."
After receiving her master's degree in chemistry from the University of Padua in 1973, Addadi decided to move to Israel. "As long as I can remember, I'd always wanted come to Israel," says Addadi, who recalls declaring once, at the age of 12, that she would become a scientist at the Weizmann Institute.
Since Addadi's husband was working in the center of Israel, she approached nearby universities. "At other places, I felt a bit like a beggar; they kept asking me 'Why are you here? We don't need any more graduate students.' But when I came to the Institute, I immediately felt that they really wanted me here ? that was quite a shock!"
She earned her Ph.D. under the tutelage of Prof. Meir Lahav of the Materials and Interfaces Department. "There was one particular question he was researching that really appealed to me: How is it that all the amino acids in proteins have the same symmetry? That's when I got 'hooked'." Addadi says. "The fine line between biology and chemistry also has an aesthetic appeal. For example, crystals or the skeletons that living creatures build are amazingly beautiful, especially when you look at their structure greatly magnified under an electron microscope."
Although Addadi knew about her great-grandfather's shell collection, she had no clue as to its whereabouts until she returned to the Weizmann Institute from a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. She began collaborating with Steve Weiner, who had just joined the Institute and was working on biomineralization and shells. Addadi commented on the coincidence of her working on shells, considering that her great-grandfather used to collect them. "Steve then told me he knew about a wonderful collection that had been donated by a family in Venice, and that he used to go to see it to study the taxonomy of specific shells. It took but a few phone calls to verify that it was my great-grandfather's collection."
Addadi was quite pleased to find her great-grandfather's collection by way of her own research. "This really got me involved in the collection, and what amazes me is the coincidence that brought me back full circle to my family."