Tag Archives: history

Nobel Laureate links Science and Art

July 24, 2012 admin Leave a comment

Prof. Dan Shechtman is a research professor in the Faculty of Materials Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. In 2011, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals. But not a lot of people know that he is also a talented jewelry craftsman.

1972, Dayton, Ohio. It all began innocently enough. Zippi, Dan’s wife, was busy in the evenings studying for a Master’s Degree in Sociology, and Dan Shechtman, a postdoctoral fellow, found himself studying stone polishing in the arts center during his free time. Before long, five pairs of polished stones accumulated. Each pair, a different color. What would he do with them? He found himself attending a silver jewelry making course, from that moment onwards, sensitively and delicately, Dan has been creating and designing jewelry. Jewelry for his wife: only for his wife.

An exhibition of handcrafted jewelry created by Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman was displayed on campus. The exhibition showcased 15 unique pieces ranging from earrings, necklaces and bracelets with a single item — an Aztec-inspired silver belt buckle— which Distinguished Prof. Shechtman made for himself.

The exhibition, curated by Anat Har-Gil, took place June 10 to June 14, 2012, on campus.

Technion at 100.

July 3, 2012 admin Leave a comment

You might also like: Together: the story of the century.

Speech for the Opening of the 2012 Board of Governors’ Annual Meeting, Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie.
[Transcript]

One hundred years ago we started from scratch: no foundations, no buildings, no funding for salaries or equipment, no faculty members, almost no engineers, and no reason to believe that this grandiose vision would ever materialize. Stone by stone, the historical building of the Technion started to arise. A well was dug on site – a source of water to be used not only by the Technion’s laboratories and visitors, but by the local community of Haifa as well.

The Technion’s slow and torturous development took place during the era of the two world wars and the establishment of the State of Israel. During the decades since – and in the face of so many wars – the Technion stuck to its vision: striving for peace through scientific activities and collaborations, as well as caring for the advancement, health and security of the State of Israel and the whole of humanity.

What is the Technion today, one hundred years later? Those who look for the answer to this question would have to go around campus wearing a magic gown that would make them invisible, allowing them to enter classrooms, labs, offices and even hospital rooms, without disturbing the usual course of events.

A good starting point would be the heart of campus, where you could join young students sitting on the grass and enjoying a sunny afternoon, holding laptops and talking, drinking coffee, and discussing the latest lecture on computer science, physics or mathematics. If you listen closely, you will hear a mixture of languages – Hebrew (as well as Hebrew with a Russian accent!), Arabic, English (as well as English with a Canadian accent!) – and see couples bent over their computers, speaking Chinese as though they were the only people in the world.
Sitting on the benches at the edges of the lawn, you could see a Frisbee flying from one end of the lawn to another in a skillful Californian style.

Later, you are welcome to tiptoe into the classrooms of the Ullmann building. There you can see hundreds of glittering eyes staring at the young lecturer in front of them, who is writing a complicated equation on the blackboard while students are trying to absorb each and every word. Not a long way from there are the smaller classrooms, where students are absorbed in heated discussions about the right design for an engineering model, or about the right location for a green belt in a new community.

Now you’d be ready for a visit to the research labs, where you could immediately feel the excitement in the air, when a professor and his or her students are waiting anxiously for the results of an important experiment they had been planning for months. Their joyful calls echo throughout the building when the laser beam hits the target, just as they had predicted. You are welcome to join them when they celebrate the successful experiment at the Junta Bar, located in the new Zielony Student Union Building.

If no one is sitting in front of the gigantic Titan, and nobody is working in the cleanrooms at the Zisapel nanotechnology building, you could sneak a peak into the enormous microscope, and even pretend to be Nobel Prize winner Distinguished Professor Danny Shechtman and call out “Eureka”, when you see the atoms twirl and form into a scientific creation never seen before.
But this is not all. If you could sneak into the workshops or the offices of the Technion’s faculties, or the offices at the Senate Building, you could meet our excellent technical and administrative staff members, whose contribution to the Technion’s everyday operation is priceless. On the eastern slopes of the campus hill, at the Center for Pre-University Education, hundreds of youngsters are getting a second chance to become Technion students. On the western slopes of the hill, in the late afternoons, you could join groups of toddlers playing in the sandboxes of the Zielony Graduate Student Village, while their mothers are sitting on a nearby bench, studying for tomorrow’s physics or chemistry test. Later, you could visit patients lying in their beds in Haifa’s hospitals and in other hospitals across the country, where students of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine are taking their first cautious steps in medical diagnosis and treatment, or you could explore the Sohnis Family Research Laboratory for Cardiac Electrophysiology and Regenerative Medicine, where you could admire a process that re-programs a patient’s skin cells into heart cells, thus paving the way to a completely new field of medicine.

These are the many aspects of the Technion’s everyday life, its multifaceted reality.

Seventy thousand graduates and millions of scientists, students, entrepreneurs and civilians around the world have been inspired by the Technion’s work. Since the engineering of that first well in Haifa, the minds of Technion graduates and faculty members have given forth a flow of inventions, new products and innovative services: portable memory devices; the Lempel-Ziv algorithm for information compression; Azilect – a medicine for treating early stages of Parkinson’s and other diseases; the deciphering of the ubiquitin mechanism, which is responsible for protein decomposition in cells; the fascinating world of quasiperiodic crystals; and more.

This year was one of the most wondrous years in the Technion’s history: The Technion has reached its hundredth anniversary with a new Nobel Prize winner – the third Technion scientist in seven years to receive this greatest of honors. At the end of 2011 we received the dramatic announcement that Mayor Michael Bloomberg chose the Technion and Cornell University to establish the new innovation institute in New York City. We could not have wished for better gifts for our 100th anniversary.

All these wonderful achievements could not have been possible without the support of our dedicated and committed friends in Israel and abroad. This group of remarkable individuals, who we honor today with Honorary Fellowships, is a wonderful example of the worldwide Technion family of supporters. They come from Israel, the United States, Germany, Brazil and Britain. Each and every one of them deserves our deepest gratitude, for their long-lasting love and unwavering support of the Technion.

This year, I joined a group of Israeli students who visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. It was a touching experience that affected me more deeply. Together with those talented youngsters – brilliant minds of the future – we stood in that remote place, where thousands of other brilliant minds were annihilated, and we feel and say, “It’s all right. In the end, we won.. We triumphed by the power of justice.”

We, at the Technion, have had a significant role in that triumph.

FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM: Message from Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie.

April 4, 2012 admin Leave a comment

A Creative Space: The Technion Gutwirth Ecological Garden,
April 2012, Picture by Technion student Guy Shahar

Welcome to this spring 2012 edition of Technion LIVE. In these days we are celebrating the redemption of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt through the festival of Passover. Also in this time, we celebrate 100 years since April 11th, 1912 – the day when the first cornerstone was placed to physically declare the intent to create a first center of higher learning for the Jewish people in what was then Ottomon-occupied Palestine.

We must never forget the creative space that comes before a great inspiration. Whether it was the urge of Moses to redeem his people through a great leap of trust into the wilderness, or whether it was the early visionaries of the Technion – who saw that the Jewish people could be freed from centuries of bloodshed and antisemitism in the diaspora by taking physical responsibility for their destiny and by moving also with a great leap of faith into the unknown.

Technion is a place that is world-renowned for innovation and for its record numbers of start-ups and patents. Yet, our innermost secret is the strength of our basic research – that which has won Nobel Prizes for three of our scientists. This basic research is a direct function of our ability to invest in creative space – where the scientists can move with freedom and curiosity – pursing knowledge and skills, following his or her inspiration, without conditions. Only academic institutes of research can give this. From the front-lines of research at the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), through to the steady unveiling of the mysteries of life through the Lorry I. Lokey Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, through to dyamic programs like the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) which is now a national coordinator in research into solar fuels – this creative space of basic research is the potent key to discovery and progress.

A Happy Passover and a proud Technion Cornerstone Centennial to all our students, friends and alumni in Israel and around the world. May we join together as one humanity in taking responsibility for our global future in order to open more freedom, peace and progress for all.

Professor Peretz Lavie
President

FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM: Message from Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie.

April 4, 2012 admin Leave a comment

A Creative Space: The Technion Gutwirth Ecological Garden,
April 2012, Picture by Technion student Guy Shahar

Professor Peretz Lavie
President

1912-2012: Technion Timeline of a Century.

February 12, 2012 admin Leave a comment

Landmark behind Time

The Technion’s historic building was designed by the renowned Jewish German architect, Alexander Baerwald. His design includes both oriental and European motives. It is built from sandstone quarried in Tantura and Atlit. The building was part of Baerwald’s plan of an open corridor leading directly to the bay. He also designed buildings that would line the road, of which some were built, indeed (e.g. the Hebrew Reali School).

The building’s cornerstone was laid in 1912. The building’s construction was delayed during the First World War. The partially completed building was used, then, as a military hospital. In 1925 it became the home of Israel’s first institute of higher education – The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Until 1953, all the Technion Faculties were located there. By 1965, most of them have moved to the Technion new campus in Haifa’s Nave Shaanan. The Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning stayed in the historic Technion building until 1985.

Timeline of the Century

2012: Technion partners with Cornell University to found the Technion Cornell Institute of Innovation (TCII), an international ‘School of Genius’ in the heart of New York City.

2011: Technion Prof. Dan Shechtman receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals.

2007: Technion pools its brainpower in a unique multidisciplinary center for research into energy science, technology and engineering: The Grand Technion Energy Program.

2006: Technion is Israel’s 1st university to receive the Nobel Prize for Science. Prof. Aaron Ciechanover and Prof. Avram Hershko jointly receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery, together with Irwin Rose, of the ubiquitin system within living cells.

2005: Technion opens the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) to further empower and concentrate the plethora of excellent scientists, researchers and students pioneering science in the nano dimension.

2001: Technion scientists reveal they have long been quietly researching solutions to meet the threat of 3rd millennium terrorism as revealed by the horrific events in the US of September 11th

1998: Combining microbiology and microelectronics, scientists show how to make a transistor 1/100,000th the size of a human hair

1993: Technion students design and launch their own satellite: Gurwin Tech Sat. The satellite is still in orbit.

1991: Gulf War – Technion shows that the integration of expertise of Israel’s top institute of technology with its dynamic medical school makes Technion first responders in responding to missile attack on the home-front.

1989: Optoelectronics: A new center of excellence pioneering the technological promise of an expert understanding of light.

1982: The Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences is established. During more than two decades of activity, the Institute has established itself as an internationally recognized research center and counts among its members several world-renowned scientists.

1981: Fiberoptics is pioneered by Technion

1978: Camp David accords with Egypt: the scientific challenges of peace and nation-planning means that in addition to its many projects in water management and environmental engineering, the Technion sets up the Samuel Neaman Institute.

1973: Yom Kippur War

1971: The Faculty of Biology is set up.

1969: The faculty of medicine is born. The first class consists of 43 students who had their preclinical education abroad. They were admitted to the fourth year and finished the requirements for the degree of Medical Doctor (M.D.), after two years of clinical training in the hospitals. The same year also sees the birth of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Faculty of Computer Science.

1967: Six-Day War, Faculty of Materials Engineering is set up.

1966: Agricultural engineering degrees awarded to students from Africa and Asia

1965: Department of Education in Technology and Science

1962: Faculty of Food Engineering and Biotechnology

1961: Technion offers a flourishing graduate school and R&D foundation

1960: The Faculty of Mathematics and the Faculty of Physics are formed.

1958: The opening of the Faculty of Chemistry, the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, and The Department of Humanities and Arts

1956: Students take part in the Sinai War

1954: Technion founding father Prof. Albert Einstein is awarded a Technion honorary doctorate. The Faculty of Chemical Engineering is opened.

1953:The Department of Aeronautical Engineering and the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering are set up in the new campus.

1952: Rapid growth and expansion and increasing demand for Technion graduates and engineers nation-wide means the Technion leaves its first home in the historic building in down-town Haifa. Prime-Minister David Ben Gurion selects the new site for Technion City further up the slopes of Mount Carmel.

1948: With 680 students, Technion celebrates the declaration of independence. Studies are disrupted for most of the year as faculty and students fight for independence. The Faculty of Electrical Engineering and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering are opened.

1944: Survival tasks – Technion develops early warning systems against air attacks as well as weapons for the Hagannah, the Israeli underground army that are preparing for the War of Independence.

1943: 1000 skilled Technion graduates join the war effort against Nazi Germany

1938: The Faculties of civil engineering, architecture, industrial engineering and opened, together with 11 new labs and a nautical school

1935: The Polish government recognizes Technion

1934: The Faculty of Industrial Technology is established covering broad fields.

1931: Technion staff vote to work for nothing to ensure their institute survives.

1928: First class of 17 Technion engineers and architects graduates

1926: Zeev Jabotinsky addresses Technion Haganah members

1924: Technion officially enrolls 1st class of engineering students

1923: Einstein’s first visit in which he becomes president of the first Technion society, the German Technion Society

In 1923, Albert Einstein visited the empty building of the Technikum, where there was a plan to give courses for word workers, electricians and telephone and telegraph workers. Although the derelict buildings were being used as a hostel for immigrants from Europe, Albert Einstein did not think the dream of founding a technical university in the Middle East to be fantasy. As a great scientist, Einstein knew that what makes the impossible possible is the courage to follow an inspiration.

1920: The building is legally acquired and recruitment for staff begins

1914: 1918 German, Turkish and then British troops occupy the building

1913: A battle continues over the language of Technion instruction: German or revitalized Hebrew? Hebrew wins.

1912: The cornerstone is laid for Technion’s building

1908: Wissotzky, Schiff and the Jewish National Fund invest in the new “Technikum”

1903: Hebrew teachers association of Palestine calls for a polytechnic university

1902: Herzl publishes the novel Altneuland (The Old New Land), which takes place in Palestine, creating the vision for a Jewish state and Zionism.

1901: 5th Zionist congress calls for a Jewish technological university, as a first necessary step to realize the dream of a Jewish state.

We began with a thought…

“Our technical inventors, who are the true benefactors of humanity… will discover things as marvelous as those we have already seen, or indeed more wonderful than these…”

Theordor Herzl, 1896, The Jewish State

In 1902, Theodor Herzl envisioned Haifa as “a great park….with an overhead electrical train…. a city of magnificent homes and public institutions all made possible by applied science, engineering and technology.” (Altneuland)

At that time, even an automobile was an exceptional extravagance of engineering. Electricity was still an expensive luxury for the elite few.

Haifa was a small, remote, coastal town most easily accessed by boat.

The advance of science and technology; the creation of the State of Israel; the emergence of the global village connected by the information superhighway; discoveries in basic science that have fundamentally changed the way scientists think about the material world, and the tremendous applied advances taking place in every corner of Technion City are just some of the miracles witnessed in the past century.

It all began with an inspirational thought in the mind of one man, Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl. Prof. Albert Einstein later added his mind to the vision. Thousands of great thinkers have since added to the blaze of light which is Technion, creating an institute of technology that in the 3rd millennium is truly a light to the nations.