Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), Russian-born chemist and Zionist leader, who became the first president (1949-1952) of modern Israel.

Weizmann was born on November 27, 1874, in Motol’, Russia (now in Belarus), and was educated in Germany and Switzerland at the universities of Berlin and Fribourg. He became lecturer in chemistry at the University of Geneva in 1901 and reader in biochemistry at the University of Manchester in 1904. In 1910 he became a British subject. While director (1916-1919) of the British admiralty laboratories, he was responsible for the discovery and development of a method for synthesizing acetone, used in explosives manufacturing.

During his student days, Weizmann had become interested in Zionism, and he was an early leader of the movement. He was instrumental in securing proclamation in 1917 by the British government of the Balfour Declaration, endorsing the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Weizmann was president (1921-1929) of the World Zionist Organization, acting as a force for compromise between those who wanted immediate implementation of the declaration and the British and Arabs who resisted any such moves. From 1929 to 1931 and from 1935 to 1946 he held the office of president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, a quasi-governmental organization under the British mandatory authorities; he thus exercised some political authority over Jewish residents of Palestine.

Weizmann moved to Palestine in 1934 and served also as director of the Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovot and as president of the board of governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During World War II, he was honorary adviser to the British ministry of supply. In 1948 Weizmann was named president of the provisional government; the following year he became the first president of the new nation of Israel.

The Weizmann Institute of Science, incorporating the Sieff Institute, was founded at Rehovot in 1949, and Weizmann was appointed director. His research there, largely in agronomy, involved crop production and soil management and the development of new protein foodstuffs. His autobiography, Trial and Error, was published in 1949. He died in Rehovot on November 9, 1952.