Moshe Novomeysky - Dead Sea Development

Dead Sea Development

Novomeysky's interest in the Dead Sea can be traced back to his meeting with fellow scientist and Zionist Otto Warburg in 1906, who introduced him to a report about the Dead Sea by German geologist Blankenhorn. He discerned similarities between its chemical composition and those of the Siberian lakes. In 1907, he applied to the Ottoman Turkish authorities for permission to extract salts from the Dead Sea.

In 1911, he visited the Dead Sea for the first time. With a climate that was the polar opposite of his birthplace, he wrote, "This was something of quite a different order from anything I had known." He then set about testing the Dead Sea's specific gravity, water and air temperatures, and the practicality of constructing evaporation pans. He then returned to Siberia.

In 1920, Novomeysky immigrated to Mandate Palestine and began using his Hebrew name, Moshe. He settled his family in Gedera, near Tel Aviv, and purchased some land on the Dead Sea's northern shore, near Jericho. Towards the end of 1922 he purchased rights to mine salt at Mount Sodom and sail on the sea from a Bethlehem Arab, along with some disused huts on the northern shore. He continued his pursuits by founding a company, "Jordan", to search for oil. In 1924 he founded the Palestine Mining Syndicate, and conducted more geological surveys of the Dead Sea with the British geologist George Stanfield Blake.

In 1925, the High Commissioner for Palestine granted him permission to continue the surveys. In April, he sent the manager of his plant in Hadera, Moshe Langutzky, to conduct research on the northern shore. Langutzky spent two years observing, surveying, and running early attempts at potash exploitation, all on his own.