Biography
Weizmann was born in the village of Motal near Pinsk in Belarus (at that time part of the Russian Empire). He was the third of 15 children. His father was a timber merchant. Until the age of 11, he attended a traditional heder. At the age of 11, he entered high school in Pinsk.
Weizmann studied chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Darmstadt, Germany, and University of Fribourg, Switzerland. In 1899, he was awarded a doctorate with honors. In 1901, he was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Geneva and, in 1904, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester.
He was married to Vera Weizmann. The couple had two sons. The younger one, Flight Lt Michael Oser Weizmann (d. 1942, aged twenty-five), serving as a pilot in the British No. 502 Squadron RAF, was killed when his plane was shot down over the Bay of Biscay.
His nephew Ezer Weizman also became president of Israel. Chaim Weizmann is buried beside his wife in the garden of his home at the Weizmann estate, which is located on the grounds of Israel's science research institute, The Weizmann Institute of Science.
In 2005, he was voted the 45th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.
Read more about this topic: Chaim Weizmann
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