Israelis You Should Know: Haim Harari

The Fellowship  |  November 18, 2016

Name: Haim Harari

Age: 76

Known for: Harari is an Israeli physicist who has made great contributions not only in his field of particle physics, but in science education, as well.

About him: Born in 1940 in Jerusalem, Haim Harari comes from a family which has been in the Holy Land for five generations. Haim’s father was Knesset member Yizhar Harari.

Harari received his masters and doctorate degrees from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After finishing his Ph.D. in 1967, he became the youngest professor ever at the Weizmann Institute. As President of the same from 1988 to 2001, Dr. Harari oversaw the Institute’s rise to one of the leading academic research organizations in the world.

As a leading particle physicist, Dr. Harari coined the name of the top and bottom quarks, among other developments in this important scientific field. He also proposed the Rishon Model for quarks and leptons, the most fundamental particles in nature.

But Dr. Harari’s work is not only reserved for physics. He founded Perach, an Israeli tutoring and mentoring project that sees Israel’s college students devoting time and care to underprivileged children. In addition, he also founded a science teaching center for high school students to perform their studies in advanced laboratories under the guidance of top teachers.

For his many contributions to science and education, Dr. Haim Harari has received membership into both the Israel Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Israel Prize; the Rothschild Prize in Physics; the EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture in Education; and the Harnack Medal from the Max Planck Institute.