The members are Prof. Yaakov Blaidshein from Ben Gurion, Prof. Chava Torniansky from the Hebrew University and Prof. Yosef Yordan from the Weizmann Institute
Today, Tuesday, (December 11, 2007), the traditional ceremony of awarding the Academy's membership certificates to three scientists joining its ranks will take place at the Israel National Academy of Sciences. The new members, professors from universities in Israel, were elected at the Academy's general meeting based on the recommendation of Academy members from its two divisions, the Humanities Division and the Natural Sciences Division.
The Academy, the highest body in the scientific community, was founded by law in 1961 with the aim of bringing together the best scientific personalities in Israel in order to foster and promote scientific activity in the country and to advise the Israeli government on actions related to research and scientific planning of national importance. The academy has 96 researchers, of which 53 are from the natural sciences and 43 from the humanities and social sciences.
And these are the new members joining the academy
The natural sciences representative in the current round is Prof. Yosef Jordan from the Department of Biological Control at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is a world-renowned scientist, whose achievements in the field of signal transmission and cancer research included important and groundbreaking discoveries.
Prof. Jordan devoted his research to understanding the biological role of hormone-like molecules called growth factors. These molecules supervise the development of the fetus and continue to act in adulthood, for example in wound healing and breast development. Prof. Jordan was involved in many crucial discoveries that clarified the role played by growth factors in cancer. He was a pioneer in isolating a number of growth factors on their receptors, that is, the proteins that are on the cell shell and transmit instructions for its division. His extensive research on the structure and function of growth factor receptors led to the recognition of the importance of using them as targets in cancer treatment. Indeed, in the last decade a number of effective cancer drugs have been developed that attack the growth factors and their receptors.
Prof. Jordan's works have won him many awards, including the AMT Award in Biochemistry (XNUMX), the Dudley Wright Research Award in Biomembranes, the Somech Sachs Award in Chemistry, the Andre Loew Award, the Lombroso Award in Cancer Research, Michael Bruno on behalf of the Yad Hanadiv Foundation, the founders' award of the Teva company and the MERIT excellence award of the National Cancer Research Institute in the United States. Prof. Jordan is a member of the European Organization for Molecular Biology and the Asia-Pacific International Network for Molecular Biology. He is currently the dean of the graduate school at the Weizmann Institute, chairman of the National Committee for Biotechnology and chairman of the research committee of the Cancer Society. In the past he also served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Director of the Moros Cancer Research Institute.
Prof. Jacob Blidstein of the Department of Israeli Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and former dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences is a world-renowned expert in the study of Israeli thought and halachic thought. He is the recipient of the Israel Prize for Israel Thought (XNUMX) and an honorary doctorate at Yeshiva-University in New York.
Prof. Chava Torniansky, professor emeritus of the Yiddish department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is considered a leading researcher of the history of Yiddish literature in the pre-modern period and is one of the most important historians of Ashkenazi Jewish culture in the late Middle Ages and early modern times. She devoted extensive research to the memoir she wrote in Yiddish, Glickel Bat Leib (better known as Glickel Hamel). The author presented us with a unique historical document that describes both the events of a seventeenth century Hebrew woman as well as her character and life being of the society in which she grew up and worked. The critical edition of the book of memories, which includes their translation into Hebrew, won Prof. Torniansky the Bialik Prize for the Wisdom of Israel (XNUMX). Prof. Torniansky devoted a great deal of research activity to ancient Yiddish literature, and at the same time she also published important studies on modern authors such as Y.L. Peretz, Y. Bashevis-Zinger and A. Sutzkvar, as well as on various and varied topics, including the status of women in Ashkenazi Jewish society.
