Haim Harari

• Chairman, Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science

• Chairman of the Management Committee, Weizmann Global Endowment Management, N.Y.

• Institute Professor (Annenberg Chair of High Energy Physics)

• Former President, Weizmann Institute

Haim Harari is a fifth-generation Israeli, who has contributed to three different fields: Particle Physics Research, Science Education and Science Management and Policy Making. He has been active in numerous international Science and Technology reviews as well as in a variety of business related activities.

Harari served as President of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel from 1988 to 2001. During his presidency, the Institute entered numerous new scientific fields, built 47 new buildings, raised one billion dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its current tenured professors and became one of the highest royalty-earning academic organizations in the world.

Harari joined the Institute staff in 1966, becoming Full Professor in 1970. He made major contributions to Particle Physics, and in 1975 was the first to synthesize the current “standard model” of six quarks and six leptons.

In the field of education, Harari served as a Dean of the Graduate School (1972-1978), and established “Perach”, a national tutoring program for underprivileged children in Israel, currently involving 30,000 undergraduates, helping a similar number of children. He served as Chairman of both the Planning and Grants Committee of Israel’s Council for Higher Education (1979-85) and the board of Israel Center of Science and Technology Education (1995-98). In 1991-2 he chaired the National Panel on Science Education, leading to a report, which has since been the blueprint for science education in Israel's schools.

His honors include membership in the Israel Academy of Sciences (1978), the Rothschild Prize in Physics (1976), the Israel Prize (1989), the "EMET" prize in Education (2004), four honorary doctorates, the “Commander Cross of the Order of Merit” presented by the President of Germany and the Harnack Medal of the Max Planck Society. He is a member of the International Advisory Boards of DaimlerChrysler and of SwissRe and he serves as a chairman or member of various Boards of academic and educational organizations. His recent book A View from the Eye of the Storm – Terror and Reason in the Middle East has been published by ReganBooks/HarperCollins, New York. This was also the topic of a speech that has been widely distributed on the web.

A View from the Eye of the Storm - Terror and Reason in the Middle
East will appear in an Italian translation in the Fall of 2006. The original English version was published in April 2005, before the London July 2005 murders, the Gaza disengagement, the Hamas election victory, and the recent Israeli - Hizbullah war. The August 2006 Introduction (in English) is written as a letter to Europe.