He said these things in response to congratulatory words at a meeting of the Knesset's Science Committee in honor of his eightieth birthday * At a special meeting, honor was given to one of the most important figures in the history of science, technology, security, energy and many other fields
The Science Committee of the Knesset convened yesterday (Tuesday) for a festive and special meeting, in which its members and guests paid tribute to one of the most important personalities in the history of science, technology, security, energy and many other fields - Prof. Yuval Naaman. Naaman was involved at almost every point in many fields. Among other things, he formulated for David Ben-Gurion the strategy of the IDF, in which the term "small and smart army" was coined.
The director general of the Ministry of Science, Atalia Rosenbaum, who initiated the meeting, thanked the trustee for his help in the explanations he gave her when she took office, long after Malkhan ceased to be science minister, and also mentioned his contribution to the initiation of the Atomic Energy Committee and the Space Agency.
Prof. Yitzhak Ben Israel, head of the security studies program at Tel Aviv University, said that Naman was chief scientist at the Ministry of Defense, a position that Ben Israel himself filled many years later. "Among other things, I was a partner in a strategic definition project for the IDF. I looked for previous documents on the subject, and found a document signed by Ben Gurion, outlining the demand for a small and smart army that would be based on science and technology, and therefore scientific and technological quality in the country as a whole must be maintained. Naman did this when he was a lieutenant colonel - head of the planning branch in the operations department in the early 50s. The technology has changed, the environmental conditions have changed but the equations have remained roughly the same and the principles have remained the same. This is no small thing when you look at a document that was written over 50 years ago."
Dr. Zvi Kaplan, Director of the Israel Space Agency, told about Naaman's love for space from a young age, and about his contribution to the establishment of the Mitzpe Ramon Observatory through a "tzala" from the then Minister of Finance, Pinchas Sapir. "Israel arrived in space late, but as a country with good technological and scientific infrastructure and capabilities, it quickly took a prominent place in launching, building satellites and scientific experiments."
Others mentioned a second note that Naeman received from the Minister of Finance, when he forced the late Minister Yitzhak Modei in 1992 to allocate funds for the reception of up-and-coming scientists. Some also mentioned some of Naaman's qualities, including his wonderful memory - he learned Arabic in three months; The distribution of attention - can move with an extreme memory from topic to topic quickly; A good person, a person listens even though his knowledge gaps are huge.
Faithful: "An embarrassing obituary"
"I am embarrassed on the one hand to hear all the things about this man. It reminds me of Natan Yonatan's song "That Man". The obituary is absolutely embarrassing. Although it is based. I do not deny that I have done things throughout my life. Part of the lesson is that under any condition, if you want, you can still continue to donate. I have lived at least four careers - engineer, scientist, security man and also a public figure. Nevertheless, in each of the careers I also thought about the other three. It definitely paid off because everything started from a very small beginning. In any case, even in the field where I made a great contribution - physics - we still don't know much. We are just fleas on a remote planet. We must be more humble. Everything we know in physics relates to 5% of the contents of the universe. For 25% we call dark matter and we don't know how to explain what it is and for 70% we call dark energy and which we still don't know how to explain. Contrary to what Hawking spoke about the end of physics - we are only at the beginning of the road".
Neman said that although he himself understood things, he was not always able to convince the decision makers. For example, his friend to the Palmach, Yitzhak Rabin writes in his book service book that when asked why Israel needs a satellite, he said "no need, it must be some nonsense of Yuval Neman". Later, according to Naman, he was among the pushers for the development of Israeli military satellites.
He also accepted that in the early days of the country it was easier to take on big projects like the national carrier. Whereas today no one is ready to carry out a project that is longer than a term, such as the Sea Canal.
