Time Tunnel

01.10.2009

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75 years ago


The Rehoboth Research Institute.
Messages to Dr. Weizmann
The Palestine Post, April 11, 1934

Letter from Mr. Israel Sieff: “Perhaps it is proper that when nations are thinking in terms of narrow and exclusive nationalism, we should contribute our quota to the advancement of all human knowledge and social betterment. Am I setting the ideals of the Institute too high? I think not. It will all depend on the spirit and intellectual approach of those who lead and work here.”
 
Lord Sieff of Brimpton at the Daniel Sieff Research Institute
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

65 years ago


$150,000 for the Weizmann Institute in One Evening
Ha’aretz, December 27, 1944
 
A party chaired by the famous playwright S.N. Behrman, with the participation of Dorothy Thompson, was held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York as part of the American Committee’s fundraising campaign marking Dr. Chaim Weizmann’s 70th birthday, aimed at raising $2 million for the establishment of a scientific institute bearing Dr. Weizmann’s name in Eretz Israel. A total of $150,000 was donated at the party, including four personal donations of $25,000 each. Dorothy Thompson said, among other things: “I don’t understand why this committee doesn’t turn to non-Jews as well, as Weizmann made an enormous contribution to them too. Weizmann gave of himself not only to Jews, he belongs to us as well!”
 

60 years ago


Science Honors Weizmann in Exercises at Rehovoth
The New York Times,
November 3, 1949
 
Dedication of the Weizmann Institute: (l-r) David Ben-Gurion, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Lt. Colonel David Arnon and Dr. Vera Weizmann
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The world of science paid tribute today to Israel’s scientist-President, Dr. Chaim Weizmann. Three thousand persons, including top-ranking scientists from faraway countries, gathered here to participate in a ceremony dedicating a science department of the Weizmann Institute. The occasion also marked the eve of President Weizmann’s seventy-fifth birthday and, coincidentally, it was the thirty-second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Prof. Albert Einstein, Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts and Prof. John von Neumann of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton were among the hundreds who sent congratulations.
 

55 years ago

 
Builder of Electronic ‘Brain’
By Roy Keller
Israel Speaks, December 31, 1954
 
One day not so far off, the delicate instruments, the miles of multicoloured wire, the scores of vacuum tubes and resisters being fitted into delicate instruments which lie about a basement hall of the Weizmann Institute of Science will all be part of a giant machine; one which can “think” and solve many of the problems which mathematics and physics pose: an electronic calculator.
 
Labs at the Weizmann Institute Open with an Electronic Wave from the US
Al Hamishmar, December 5, 1954
 
The Benjamin Abrams Gamma Radiation Laboratories were dedicated at dawn at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot with an electronic wave sent from New York. While it was 4 am on Friday in Rehovot, a ceremony was held at 9 pm on Thursday in New York, where a dinner was being held by the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science in memory of Dr. Weizmann. All the arrangements for the broadcast from Rehovot to New York via Tangier were efficiently performed by the Israel Postal Services. In New York, the transfer was handled by RKO.


 50 years ago

 
Oasis of Science in the Mideast
Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science is contributing to both mankind’s knowledge and a new nation’s material well-being
By Gertrude Samuels
The New York Times Magazine, November 29, 1959
 
Chaim Weizmann, chemist and first President of Israel, envisioned a research center rising from the desert. Now marking its tenth anniversary, the Weizmann Institute is world-famous for its work in fields from biology to nuclear physics.
 
The Institute serves the state by its very existence. Standards of truth and discipline, integrity and beauty are affected by whether or not a nation has a body of workers devoted to a creative part in the scientific movement of our times. More concretely, Israel’s future depends on industrial development, and that can be achieved only through an alliance between industry and science.
 
The Institute already has created understanding and goodwill for Israel among humanists and scientists throughout the world. Tens of thousands of visitors, including Nobel Prize winners and scholars from many countries, have seen here that Israelis are not engrossed in building up a war machine, but are tackling some of the basic scientific problems to benefit the whole human race.

 

45 years ago

 
Weizmann Institute One of the Ranking
The Jewish World, February 1964
 
President John F. Kennedy
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“The Weizmann Institute has already in a few years earned its greatness. There are few institutions that have made such an extraordinary and enduring achievement in so short a time” – said the late President John F. Kennedy.
 
Set within a lovely 75-acre campus of green woodland and lawns, the self-contained self-sustaining Weizmann Institute today is considered by ranking scientists as something of a phenomenon. It is the major center of advanced scientific research in the whole of the area between India and Italy. Its aggregation of diversified scientific talents would do credit to countries with much larger resources. A question frequently raised is whether Israel can afford to maintain an institute of this type and scope. The answer is simple: Israel cannot afford not to have it.
 

 40 years ago

 
Miracles at Rehovot
Time, November 7, 1969
 
As the late Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President, once explained: “Of course, miracles happen, but it takes hard work to make them.” No Israelis work harder at miracle making than the men and women of the famed research center that bears his name. Now marking its 25th anniversary, the Weizmann Institute of Science has grown from an obscure agriculture station in the desert town of Rehovot, 15 miles south of Tel Aviv, to a 250-acre complex with 17 major departments that explore everything from atomic physics and molecular biology to seismology. Even the Arabs recognize its importance. It was one of the first targets that Radio Cairo claimed had been destroyed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war – though not a single Egyptian plane ever appeared over Rehovot.


25 years ago

 
Women Scientists: ‘Here, We Have the Same Options’
By Greer Fay Cashman
The Jerusalem Post, May 15, 1984
 
Research student Daniella Goldfarb, currently working with liquid crystals, concurs with Kedem and Dekel. “At Weizmann,” she says, “there are equal opportunities for everyone. The problems are at home, not here. It all depends on how your family accepts what you’re doing.” Goldfarb has the full support of her engineer husband Arnon, and of her mother. “However, she and my grandmother think that I work too hard. They can’t understand that I enjoy my work.”
 
Prof. Daniella Goldfarb, about 1984

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Today: Prof. Goldfarb is Chair of the Council of Professors at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Institute supports women scientists through unique initiatives, including the National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science.
 
 

10 years ago
 

Her Dream Crystallized
Ha’aretz, December 12, 1999
 
For more than 20 years, Professor Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute has been investigating one of the leading questions in molecular biology. Because this question is considered by many to be insoluble, her colleagues around the world have regarded her for years as something of a dreamer. Recently, however, when it became apparent that Yonath was on the right track, even her critics rushed to scramble aboard the bandwagon to be the first to find the solution.
 
 
 
 
Prof. Daniella Goldfarb’s research is supported by the Carolito Stiftung; and the estate of Lela London. Prof. Goldfarb is the incumbent of the Erich Klieger Professorial Chair in Chemical Physics.
 
Prof. Ada Yonath’s research is supported by the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly. Prof. Yonath is the Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professor of Structural Biology.
 
Sources: Weizmann Archives and Weizmann Institute of Science Archives
 

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