Weizmann Scientists Return Home

Gershon Kekst and Bruce G. Pollack at Weizmann dinner. Photo by Tim Boxe

Gershon Kekst and Bruce G. Pollack at Weizmann dinner. Photo by Tim Boxe

by Tim Boxer

CBS News correspondent Jeff Greenfield said he went to Bronx School of Science and failed every science class. But that didn’t hinder him from welcoming three promising scientists at a gala dinner of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute in New York.

Jacob (Yaqub) Hanna, an Israeli Arab who is a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, told how excited he is to join the department of immunology at Weizmann Institute of Science next April.

Born in a Christian family in Rama, a small village near Carmiel in the Galilee, Hanna earned his Ph.D. and M.D. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the study of embryonic stem cells.
“I was lucky to have Weizmann to continue my work in my own

country,” he said.

Ron Milo, who got a Ph.D. in biological physics at Weizmann, and did postdoctoral work in systems biology at Harvard, is a member of the department of plant sciences at Weizmann.

Maya Schuldiner got her Ph.D. in genetics at Hebrew University, was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, and is now at the department of molecular genetics at Weizmann.
As if to mollify Greenfield, Lawrence S. Blumberg, chairman of the American Committee, said he too failed all his science classes in school.

Gershon Kekst, former chairman of the Weizmann international board, presented an award to Bruce G. Pollack, chairman of the New York executive committee.

A Weizmann scientist, Ada Yonath, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry last month, becoming the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel and only the fourth woman ever to garner the chemistry prize. Yonath, 70, won the prize for her work with ribosomes.

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