Shmuel Hurwitz

Shmuel Hurwitz (1901 to 1999) was an Israeli agronomist, born in Minsk, then in the Russian Empire, who studied in Moscow. He was a close friend of the poet Saul Tchernichovsky, with whom he shared accommodation. In 1924 he was arrested for his Zionist activities and, after some months in prison, emigrated in 1925 to Mandate Palestine, where he was briefly a member of Kibbutz Gesher before going to Germany to study at the College of Agriculture in Berlin. From 1933 until 1954 he worked at the Agricultural Research Station of the Jewish Agency in Rehovot and was among its founders. He became a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1953 and Dean of its Faculty of Agriculture in 1964, and in 1957 he was awarded the Israel Prize for agriculture.