peoplepill id: alexander-eig
AE
Israel
6 views today
6 views this week
Alexander Eig
Israeli botanist

Alexander Eig

The basics

Quick Facts

Intro
Israeli botanist
A.K.A.
Eig
Places
Work field
Gender
Male
Place of birth
Minsk Governorate
Place of death
Jerusalem
Alexander Eig
The details (from wikipedia)

Biography

Alexander Eig (Belarusian: Аляксандр Эйг; 1894, near Minsk, Belarus – 30 July 1938, Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine) was a botanist, one of the first plant researchers in Israel, head of the department of Botany at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and co-founder of the National Botanic Garden of Israel on Mount Scopus campus.

Life

Alexander Eig planting the first tree in the National Botanic Garden of Israel - Mount Scopus 1931

Born in Schedrin near Minsk, he used to wander in the forests and to join his family on hunting and fishing expeditions observing the plants around. At the age of 15 he immigrated to Palestine, where he became a student in "Mikveh Israel" agricultural school.

In 1925 he was invited by Otto Warburg to join the agricultural experimental station in Tel Aviv, where he worked with Michael Zohary. A year later, the unit moved to Jerusalem, and they joined the staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In that year he married Itta Faktorovsky, the sister of his closest friend and fellow botanist Elazar Faktorovsky.

On 1931 he graduated with his Ph.D., and founded the Botanic Garden on Mount Scopus, together with Zohary and Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan. On 1932 he started teaching botany. Among his students were the brothers Aaron and Ephraim Katzir.

On 1937 he was invited by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to testify before the Peel Commission, on the question of whether the country could sustain a large population. He was later asked to prepare a map that would serve the arguments of the Zionist side in the international arena.

Eig died of cancer in 1938, at the age of less than 44 years. He was buried in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery, his gravestone bears the inscription "The creator of plant science in Israel". He was eulogized by Moshe Sharett, Hugo Bergmann, Judah Leon Magnes and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.

Plants

  • Bellevalia eigii
  • Salvia eigii
  • Eigia longistyla
  • Ornithogalum neurostegium subsp. eigii (Feinbrun) Feinbrun

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Lists
Alexander Eig is in following lists
comments so far.
Comments
From our partners
Sponsored
Alexander Eig
arrow-left arrow-right instagram whatsapp myspace quora soundcloud spotify tumblr vk website youtube pandora tunein iheart itunes