All the President's scientists

Following Shechtman's announcement - a history of scientists and leadership

Prof. Dan Shechtman's announcement that he intends to run for the position of President of the State, takes us back almost 100 years, to the first days of the First World War. With the outbreak of war, there was a severe shortage of acetone in Britain, which was an essential ingredient in the production of shells and other munitions. Until the war, acetone was produced mainly from limestone rocks that came from Germany and Central Europe, but now - when Germany was the enemy - Britain urgently needed an inexhaustible source of acetone. This is where Haim Weizmann came into the picture - a Jewish scientist, born in White Russia, who studied chemistry in Germany and Switzerland, and finally settled in Manchester. A few years earlier, Weizmann was looking for an efficient method to produce synthetic rubber, and believed - in an approach that was quite innovative at the time - that bacteria could be used to produce large quantities of the raw materials. In the end, Weizmann abandoned his efforts before finding the bacteria that would produce the desired reaction, partly because the prices of natural rubber fell, and with it the demand for synthetic rubber. With the outbreak of war, Weizmann returned to one of the processes he had developed in his experiments, because its byproduct was a large amount of acetone. Dr. Weizmann offered the British War Office the rights to the development - free of charge - and was appointed to head a laboratory that transferred the process to large-scale production. His enormous contribution to Britain's war effort paved Weizmann's way into the most central circles of influence in London. He used his influence to obtain from the British the "Balfour Declaration" - the first international recognition of the right of the people of Israel to a national home in the Land of Israel, and more from the power that would rule Israel for the next three decades. After the war, Weizmann was mainly involved in political activity. He was the president of the World Zionist Organization, and founded the Jewish Agency. His strained relationship with David Ben-Gurion ultimately led him to a mainly representative role, and with the establishment of the State of Israel he was appointed its first president. Weizmann did not have time to pour much scientific content into the position of president, partly due to his poor health. The Ziv Institute in Rehovot, near which he lived, was named after him during his lifetime and in 1949 became the Weizmann Institute.

Physics and history

Chaim Weizmann passed away in 1952, and Prime Minister Ben Gurion decided to offer the position to another scientist, who, although not Israeli, was apparently one of the most famous Jews in the world. Albert Einstein, who was born in Germany and received his scientific education in Switzerland, was one of the greatest physicists in history, partly thanks to the theories of special relativity and general relativity, which completely changed the way we understand the world. With the rise of the Nazis to power, Einstein immigrated to the USA, and joined Princeton University. In November 1952, the envoy of Israel's ambassador to the US, Abba Even, came there and presented him with an official offer to be appointed the second president of the State of Israel. Einstein rejected the offer and wrote, among other things, that he did not have the appropriate attitude or the necessary experience to fill the high position. Following Einstein's refusal, MK Yitzhak Ben Zvi, who was not a natural scientist, but a prolific researcher of the history of the Land of Israel, was elected president. Upon his death, in 1963, another member of the Knesset (and former minister), Zalman Shazar, who was also a researcher of history, mainly chapters in the history of Judaism and Hasidism, was elected to the position.

Returning to the Weizmann Institute

In 1973 Shazer finished his second term, and the Knesset was required to appoint the fourth president. Disputes within the ruling party - Labor - led party secretary Aharon Yadlin and minister Israel Galili to look for an alternative candidate to the party's presidential candidate, Knesset Deputy Speaker Yitzhak Navon. They turned to Prof. Ephraim Kachelsky from the Weizmann Institute, and managed to get him elected as the party's candidate in a secret ballot at the center, which paved the way for his election in the Knesset as well.

Kachelsky immigrated to Israel from Poland as a child, and received a doctorate in biochemistry from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1941. At the same time he was a member of Hagana, and after graduating he headed its scientific organization. Upon the establishment of the state, he was appointed commander of the IDF's Science Corps, and in 1949 he joined the Weizmann Institute, founded the Department of Biophysics and headed it. His brother, Aharon (Katzir) also joined the Institute and managed the Department of Polymers, until he was assassinated in a terrorist attack in Israel in 1972. Kachelsky was mainly engaged in the study of the structure of proteins, and developed with his students small artificial proteins, which laid the foundation for many studies (such short polymers were, for example, the basis of the drug copaxone against multiple sclerosis, which was developed at the institute led by Kachelsky's student, Michael Sela). In the 60s he developed a method for binding proteins to different surfaces, a method that became a central tool in the pharmaceutical industry and biological research. He was also very involved in scientific education, and saw a national mission in establishing new generations of scientists. When he was elected president, he also changed his name to harvest, like his late brother. Even as president he dealt a lot with education matters. After one term as president, he returned to the Weizmann Institute, and continued to engage in science almost until his death in 2009. After Katzir's presidency, the presidential house passed into the hands of rank-and-file politicians. Yitzhak Navon, Haim Herzog, Ezer Weizman (nephew of the first president), Moshe Katsav and Shimon Peres. Many of them were well-educated and literate, some even wrote, but none of them was essentially a researcher, who saw his vocation in dealing with scientific challenges.

Then Schechtman arrived
Dan Shechtman was born in Tel Aviv in 1941, and studied at the Technion for Mechanical Engineering. He then continued at the Technion for advanced studies in materials engineering, and in 1972 received a doctorate. He was engaged in metal research and in 1982, while on sabbatical in the USA, he noticed an unexpected crystal structure in an alloy he was examining with an electron microscope. It was a crystal with pentagonal symmetry, which until then was not thought to exist. Indeed, many scientists opposed the discovery and believed that it was a mistake. Later, the scientific community recognized the existence of such semi-periodic crystals ("quasi-crystals"), and Shechtman received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011. For many years, and even more so since receiving the award, Shechtman has worked tirelessly to expand scientific education in Israel. "I think I can change things for the better in this country," he said when he announced his intention to run for the presidency in an interview on Channel 1. "I am doing this even now, in many areas, especially in the field of education, education and technological entrepreneurship. But from the position of president, I think I can do much more."

Shtachman is not alone

In Israel, the idea of ​​a scientist-president has not been implemented for almost four decades, but in the wider world there are quite a few scientists and other researchers who have reached the leadership of their countries. For example, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, has a doctorate in quantum chemistry and managed to work in research for a few years after her doctorate, before turning to a political career. The President of Singapore, Tony Tan, is a PhD in Applied Mathematics, the former President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, is a PhD in Traffic Engineering and the former President of India, Abdul Kalam, is a rocket engineer. Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, also studied chemistry, and specialized in crystallography (Shechtman's field!) with Dorothy Hodgkin (Nobel Prize winner!) before turning to politics. Thatcher used to say that she was more proud of being the first Prime Minister of Great Britain to come from the field of science than of being the first woman in a high office. To all these we can also add several professors of economics who were put in charge of countries to save them from collapse, such as Mario Monti, who was the prime minister of Italy, Lucas Papademos, former prime minister of Greece, and even Salam Fayyad, who was the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.

And one final note: if Schechtman succeeds in being elected president, and even succeeds in the position, he may be able to repeat the achievement of the one who was the biggest opponent of the quasi-crystal idea, the American chemist Linus Pauling. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954, for revolutionary discoveries about the nature of the chemical bond. Eight years later he was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his fight against nuclear weapons testing. As far as is known, he never considered running for the presidency.