Quick Facts
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Israel Reichert (Hebrew: ישראל רייכרט) (5 August 1891 – 22 May 1975) was Polish-born Israeli agriculturist and biologist who established the field of phytopathology in Israel, then a part of Turkish Palestine. He worked on the management of rusts and smuts of field and fruit crops.
Biography
Reichert was born in Ozorkow, Poland in 1891 to Eliezer Chaim Layzer and Ruchama Reichert and emigrated to what was then Ottoman Palestine (now Israel) in 1908. He worked as a labourer and then taught natural history. He then went to the University of Berlin and studied botany under Adolf Engler with a thesis on the fungi of Egypt. He applied biogeographical principles to fungi and worked on the management of plant pathogenic fungi. He worked in Italy briefly in 1921 and then moved back to Palestine to start a department of plant pathology. In 1942 he moved to the Hebrew University's Agriculture School at Rehovot. He served as a professor from 1949 to 1959, co-founding the Palestine Journal of Botany in 1938.
Awards
- In 1955, Reichert was awarded the Israel Prize, for the life sciences.