The Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett, announced on Sunday that Yehudit and Yehuda Bronitsky, the founders of the energy company Ormat, won the Israel Prize in the field of industry.
The award committee convened under the chairmanship of the chairman of the committee - Mr. Shlomo Dovrat, with the members - Mr. Ran Midan and Mr. Eilon Tirosh by his side.
In its reasoning, the committee stated: "Yehuda Brunitzky, a visionary, inventor, born in Poland who survived the Holocaust and together with his wife, Dita Brunitzky, one of the first business women and entrepreneurs in Israel, a woman who is a pioneer in her field, together founded the Ormat Group and turned it into a leading company in the world in geothermal energy.
"Their strength lies in persistence, adherence to the goal and the breadth of their work, which includes partnership in the establishment of prominent technological industrial companies such as: Orbotek, Organix and others. They have learned how to connect a vision with the ability to implement and execute in a complex and changing reality, they are committed to making a breakthrough in the local and global industry and making a significant contribution to technological education, the advancement of women and innovation."
their work and their biographies
Judith (Dita) Bronitsky Together with her husband Yehuda, she founded the Ormat Group and led the business management of this group for decades. After her retirement, Dita expanded her public activities - in the field of education and technological education, in various public committees and administrations in the field, in activities to promote Israeli industry as well as in attempts to bring together and connect Jews and Arabs in Israel.
Yehuda Bronitsky Born in Lviv (then in Poland and now in Ukraine) and survived the Holocaust. Worked as a project engineer at the French nuclear research center CEA. In 1958 he immigrated to Israel and joined the Israeli Physics Laboratory in Jerusalem, where he served as the manager of the open team of the solar turbine. Yehuda has the name of a world expert in alternative energy. At the same time, he also worked for the community in the field of technological education.
The couple founded Ormat in 1965. The company entered into a license agreement with the State of Israel for the use of the first technology patents for the production of turbines, which are based on the Rankine cycle and were developed by Yehuda while working at the Israeli Physics Laboratory. The first units it produced were solar units and their intended use was pumping water in remote places in Africa.
Since no international funding was found for solar units, the intended use of the technology was converted and construction and delivery of first models of small power units for maintenance-free electricity supply to the telecommunications market was completed.
Following the energy crisis in the 70s, the company began to develop large power units and their application in the Berkat HaShem project - electricity generation from solar energy where the solar collector and heat storage is a Berkat HaShem developed by the Israeli Physics Laboratory. In the 80s, with the drop in world oil prices, the company converted the units developed for using solar energy to utilize geothermal energy from low temperatures.
In 1982, Ormat began investing in entrepreneurial companies in various fields - such as Orbot (later Orbotek) and Organics. This is with the aim of increasing the range of sustainable industry in Israel. Orbotech is currently traded on the NASDAQ and its annual sales (in 2016) are approximately $800 million. It owns more than 1100 patents and employs about 700 people in Israel.
In the late 80s, the company began to move from a business model of selling equipment to a model of initiating and establishing power plants while maintaining ownership of them and selling electricity in long-term contracts.
Today's Ormat is an international company with sales of over 660 million dollars and about 1200 employees (2016), half of them in Israel.
The Brunitsky couple also founded the Ort Ormat school. In the year of its establishment, 1970, the number of students was greater than the number of employees in Ormat, and it produced many graduates, professionals, production managers and engineers.
