Emanuel Goldberg - Biography

Biography

Goldberg was born in Moscow on 31 August 1881 (19 August 1881 in the Old Style, Julian calendar, sometimes given in error as 1 September) the son of Grigorii Ignat’evich Goldberg, a distinguished Colonel (Polkovnik) in the Tsar’s military medical corps and his wife Olga Moiseevna Grodsenka. Earlier interested in engineering, he studied Chemistry at the University of Moscow and at several German universities, and remained in Germany after 1904 to avoid antisemitism in Russia. In 1906 he received a Ph.D from the University of Leipzig for research at the Institute for Physical Chemistry, led by Wilhelm Ostwald on the kinetics of photochemical reactions. After a year as assistant to Adolf Miethe in the Photochemistry Laboratory at the Technical University in Charlottenburg, Berlin, he became head of the photographic department of the Royal Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookcraft, in Leipzig from 1907 to 1917.

In 1917 Goldberg was recruited by the Carl Zeiss Stiftung to become a director of its photographic products subsidiary Ica (Internationale Camera Aktien Gesellschaft) in Dresden where he introduced the spring-driven Kinamo movie camera. In 1926 a “Fusion” of four leading photographic firms (Contessa, Ernemann, Ica and Goerz) formed Zeiss Ikon under Goldberg’s leadership until he was kidnapped by Nazis in 1933 and fled to Paris. After four years working for Zeiss subsidiaries in France, Goldberg moved to Palestine in 1937 where he established a laboratory, later called Goldberg Instruments, which became the Electro-Optical Industries (“El-Op”) in Rehovot. A photograph taken 1943 by John Phillips for Life Magazine shows Goldberg in his work shop in Palestine. He retired in 1960 but continued his research and died in Tel Aviv on 13 September 1970.