Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Weizmann — president (1st) with roots in the Russian Empire

Chaim Azriel Weizmann was born on 27 November 1874 in Motal, a village in the Russian Empire now in Belarus, the third of fifteen children of Oizer Weizmann, a timber merchant, and Rachel Czemerinsky. The family was observant, and Motal lay within the Pale of Settlement.

After finishing school in 1891, at almost eighteen, he went to study in Germany and then Switzerland, took a doctorate in chemistry and patented several dyestuffs. In 1904 he moved to Manchester to teach chemistry at the university, and from 1905 to 1908 also worked for the Clayton Aniline Company. He had been active in the Zionist movement since the Second Zionist Congress and in 1901 helped found its Democratic Fraction.

In 1912 he identified a bacterium, Clostridium acetobutylicum, that could convert carbohydrate into acetone, and the method became known as the Weizmann process. During the First World War, when acetone was needed in quantity to make the propellant cordite, he organised its large-scale production for the Admiralty and the Ministry of Munitions. In those years he widened his contacts in the British government, having first explained the Zionist case to Arthur Balfour in Manchester in 1906, and his efforts were among those that led to the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917.

He served as president of the World Zionist Organization from 1920 to 1931 and again from 1935 to 1946; some sources date his first term from 1917 or 1921. In the early 1930s he founded the Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovot, and in 1937 he made his home there. He also served as president of the Hebrew University.

In 1948 he went to the United States to seek its support for the new state, and that year was elected president of Israel's Provisional State Council. On 16 February 1949 the Knesset elected him the first President of Israel, and the following day he took office; that year the Sieff Institute was renamed the Weizmann Institute of Science. His autobiography, Trial and Error, appeared in 1949.

He remained president, in frail health, until his death at Rehovot on 9 November 1952, aged seventy-seven. At his wish he was buried in the garden of his home there.

Tracing the roots — Motal (now Brest Region, Belarus)

Born in 1874 in Motal, a village in the Russian Empire now in Belarus, within the Pale of Settlement, the third of fifteen children of a timber merchant. He left to study in Germany and Switzerland in 1891 and settled in Manchester in 1904.

Historical context

Russian Empire · c. 1721–1917

Motal (now Brest Region, Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.

Map: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

A career defined by ambition