Science and Technology in Israel - History

History

Jewish settlement in Mandate Palestine was ideologically motivated. Return to the homeland was perceived as contingent on a return to the soil. To establish the rural villages that formed the core of Zionist ideology and produce self-supporting Jewish farmers, agronomic experiments were conducted. The foundations of agricultural research in Israel were laid by the teachers and graduates of the Mikveh Yisrael School, the country's first agricultural school, established by the Alliance Israelite Universelle in 1870. On a field trip to Mount Hermon in 1906, the agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn discovered Triticum dicoccoides, or emmer wheat, believed to be the "mother of all wheat." In 1909, he founded an agricultural research station in Atlit where he built up an extensive library and collected geological and botanical samples. The Agricultural Station, founded in Rehovot in 1921, engaged in soil research and other aspects of farming in the country's difficult climatic conditions. This station, which became the Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), is now Israel’s major institution of agricultural research and development.

In 1912, the first cornerstone of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology was laid at a festive ceremony in Haifa which was then occupied by the Ottoman Empire. The Technion would become a unique university world wide in its claim to precede and create a nation. As Jews were often barred from Technical education in Europe, the Technion claims to have brought the skills needed to build a modern state.

Established before World War I, the Hebrew Health Station in Jerusalem, founded by Nathan Straus engaged in medical and public health research, operating departments for public hygiene, eye diseases and bacteriology. The station manufactured vaccines against typhus and cholera, and developed methods of pest control to eliminate field mice. The Pasteur Institute affiliated with the station developed a rabies vaccine. Departments for microbiology, biochemistry, bacteriology, and hygiene were opened at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, founded on Mount Scopus in 1925. In 1936, Jewish workers in the center of the country donated two-days' pay toward the establishment of the "Hospital of Judea and Sharon," later renamed Beilinson Hospital. In 1938, Beilinson established the country's first blood bank.

The Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital on Mount Scopus opened in 1939 and was the first teaching hospital and medical center in the country. Since renamed the Hadassah Medical Center, it has become a leader in medical research.

Industrial research began at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, was also initiated at the Daniel Sieff Research Center (later the Weizmann Institute of Science), established in 1934 in Rehovot. The Dead Sea Laboratories opened in the 1930s.

The first modern electronic computer in Israel and the Middle East, and one of the first large-scale, stored-program, electronic computers in the world, called WEIZAC, was built at the Weizmann Institute during 1954-1955, based on the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) architecture developed by John von Neumann. WEIZAC has been recognized by the IEEE as a milestone in the history of electrical engineering and computing.

IBM Israel, registered on June 8, 1950, was the country's first high-tech firm. The company, located on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, assembled and repaired punch card machines, sorting machines and tabulators. In 1956, a local plant was opened to produce punch cards, and a year later, the first service center opened, offering computerized data processing services.

Scientific and technological research in Israel was boosted by the appointment of a chief scientist for the Industry and Trade Ministry at the recommendation of a committee headed by Ephraim Katzir, later president of Israel. The Israeli government provided grants that covered 50–80 percent of the outlay for new start-ups, with no conditions, no shareholding and no participation in management. In the early 1980s, Control Data Corporation, a partner in Elron Electronic Industries, formed the country's first venture capital firm.