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Leaders in Science

Top ten most influential Jewish scientists, arranged alphabetically

Ruth Arnon

Israel Prize laureate in medicine; professor of biochemistry, specializing in immunochemistry, 80, Israel
 

Mathematician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, 73, Israel

“Simplistic peacemaking can cause war, while arms race, credible war threats and mutually assured destruction can reliably prevent war”

Professor Aumann started his study of game theory back in 1955, when it was a new field of mathematical research. Today, Aumann is considered a founder of several branches in that field and was the first to have analyzed, in an organized fashion, series of “games” aiming to identify predictable patterns in players’ behavior, or to pinpoint recommended courses of action to individual players or player groups. Aumann is convinced that decisions are indeed made rationally. In his research, Aumann created a set of tools enabling precise analysis of economic systems, in which groups of participants influence outcomes to a significant degree, while each individual player’s influence, when acting on his own, is negligible. More than any other scholar, Aumann established game theory as a principal tool of economic science.

Aumann, born in Germany, emigrated to the U.S., where he received his education. He moved to Israel during the Suez Crisis.

Israel Prize Laureate in Biology, Professor Emeritus of biochemistry, winner of the Wolf Prize, the Emet Award and the Gairdner Award, 70, Israel

“Methylation is not a change in the genetic text itself, rather in what is there above or around the text. It is like biblical cantillation or footnotes”

Several decades ago, together with Aharon Razin, Cedar discovered DNA methylation, the chemical process whereby a group of carbon atoms and three hydrogen atoms attach to a part of the DNA and shut down its operation so that it can manifest itself in only the appropriate part of the body. For years, Cedar and Razin attempted to convince the scientific community of the importance of their discovery, ultimately winning recognition and prestigious prizes. The two have been mentioned as potential candidates for the Nobel Prize.

Cedar and Razin’s scientific discoveries brought about far-reaching changes in genetic research and in the treatment of diseases.

Cedar, a researcher and educator at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was a source of inspiration for his son, director Joseph Cedar, in his recent Oscar-nominated film Footnote.

Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Israel Prize laureate in biological research, Technion Distinguished Research Professor, 66, Israel

“In the world of the Almighty, I am a mere tourist who had an opportunity to take a peek and become a partner in a discovery that has been there since the days of Creation”

Professor Aaron Ciechanover’s research focused on deciphering the mechanisms affecting the stability of proteins within the cell and their role in causing disease. Ciechanover’s research, seeking to understand why the human body requires a daily replacement of some 10 percent of the various substances that comprise it, made an important breakthrough in cancer research and the study of other illnesses. Since winning the Nobel Prize in 2004 together with his mentor, Avram Hershko, Ciechanover has been granted some 50 honorary doctorates by academic institutions the world over. Together with Hershko, Ciechanover received a number of other prestigious awards, including the Wachter Award, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Michael Landau Prize for Life Sciences and the Emet Prize for Art, Science and Culture awarded by the AMN Foundation and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

Ciechanover is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, European Molecular Biology Organization, and the Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biology Network. In recent years, he has also served as Dean of the Chemical Sciences and Bio-Pharmaceutics Institute at the University of Nanjing, China.

Professor of electrical engineering at MIT, professor of mathematics at the Weizmann Institute, 2012 Turing Award recipient, 55, USA-Israel

“I’d like to know that I am serving as a model for women to succeed in the field”

She lives her life on an Israel-USA axis, dealing with mathematical fields far above the comprehension of most human beings. Already 30 years ago, Shafi Goldwasser put her name on particularly useful encryption schemes in the field of cryptology. These schemes, at the end of the process, contribute dramatically to securing our communications: Internet browsing, credit card use, and any time we enter a code into a computerized network, like an ATM.

Goldwasser is the third woman in history to win the Turing Award (along with Silvio Micali) – the Nobel of the computer world. The prize was given to her for pioneering “new methods for efficient verification of mathematical proofs in complexity theory.” Goldwasser is also a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Contrary to the norm in computer sciences, Goldwasser never turned her innovations into commercial high-tech initiatives.

Biochemist, Nobel and Israel Prize winner in Chemistry, Distinguished Professor at the Technion, member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and the United States National Academy of Arts and Sciences, 76, Israel

 “When I look back upon my life until present, I am amazed at how fortunate I am – both in my personal life and in my life as a scientist”

Professor Hershko grew up in Hungary, where together with his mother and siblings, he was first imprisoned in a ghetto during World War II and then deported to a Nazi concentration camp in Austria. After the war and the establishment of
the State of Israel, Hershko and his parents immigrated to Israel.Hershko’s research, conducted together with his student Aaron Ciechanover (see above) and Erwin Rose, dealt with the system that is responsible for protein degeneration within the cell. The important breakthrough in his research occurred when he discovered that proteins destined for destruction are marked with a link to a protein called ubiquitin.

Hershko also studied the connection between ubiquitin and the ways in which cells divide. His research made an important contribution to the study of cancer and other diseases. He won a number of prestigious awards, including the Wolf Prize, the Emet Award, the Weizmann Prize and the Lasker Award.

Structural biologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, professor at Stanford, member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 66, USA

“Even as we celebrate and savor this moment, the work goes on”

Kornberg’s path in biochemistry research seemed predictable, considering that he is the son of chemist Arthur Kornberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, and a biochemist mother.

In the course of his scientific career that started in the late ’60s, Roger Kornberg made a series of significant scientific discoveries – including the first comprehensible representation of how the process of transcription works on the molecular level in eukaryotes, organisms with a welldefined cell nucleus. This process leads to the formation of the RNA and protein generation. In 2001, Kornberg published the first molecular picture of the RNA enzyme Polymerase II. His research made an important contribution to the understanding of eukaryotic transcription and the errors that occur in its course, which cause cancer, birth defects and other inborn diseases.

Kornberg is engaged in research at the Institute of Life Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor of biomedicine at the Technion, recipient of the 2006 Krill Prize, 44, Israel

“I am not creating, rather, using things created by the Creator"

Levenberg is among the world’s leading scientists in the field of biomedical engineering. Her research, which has dealt with manufacturing tissue for creating blood cells and the use of stem cells and polymers, was considered groundbreaking.

Her research has included the creation of muscle tissue out of stem cells successfully implanted in rats,and the creation of heart tissue – for the first time from human embryonic stem cells and with a vascular system. These findings are likely to enable the creation of replacement body parts – and therefore present a turning point in the medical sphere.

Levenberg, mother to five and Torah-observant, studied at the Weizmann Institute and at MIT, and today runs a lab in the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion
in Haifa. In addition, she has served as a visiting professor at Harvard. In 2006, Scientific American chose her as a research leader in scientific engineering on its list of the 50 most influential people in the field of science and technology.

Engineer and researcher of the structure of materials, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and Israel Prize laureate for Physics; research professor at the Technion, 72, Israel

“In building a state, nothing is more important than education”

For many years, Professor Shechtman struggled to prove his great discovery
– the ability of solid materials to organize themselves asymmetrically as quasi-periodic crystals. He first stumbled upon this possibility during his sojourn at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S.; however, when he shared his discovery with his colleagues at the research institute, he was asked to leave for bringing disgrace to the team.

Only upon returning to the Technion did Shechtman succeed in finding a model that explained the phenomenon. His discovery led to a major revision of the scientific definition of a crystal, and to the discovery of additional types of crystals, the existence of which was previously considered impossible. He is a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences, member of the United States National Academy of Engineering and the European Academy of Sciences.

Nobel and Israel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, professor at the Weizmann Institute, 74, ISRAEL

“If, because of my fame, someone decides that they want to study and perhaps also become a scientist – that will be my reward”

Prof. Yonath’s research focused on decoding the spatial structure of the ribosome, the intra-cellular mechanism responsible for translating genetic code and generating proteins, by forming crystals which are then irradiated with X-rays. Yonath pioneered her research back in the 1970s. A major breakthrough in her work came at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, when she succeeded in deciphering the two “secondary units” of the ribosome. Science crowned Yonath’s work as one of the 10 most significant scientific achievements of the year 2000.

Yonath’s research contributed a great deal to the understanding of the way in which antibiotic medicines work. Her continued research, focusing on protein generation within the ribosome, promises to make us able to produce antibiotics that are far more efficient than those used today. She is a member of the Council for Higher Education in Israel as well as the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences and its European counterpart, and director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure.

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