Abba Eban

Abba Eban was born in 1915 in Cape Town

Abba Eban was born Aubrey Solomon in Cape Town, South Africa, on 2 February 1915, to Jewish parents of Lithuanian origin. In 1920 the family returned to London. After his father died, his mother married Dr. Isaac Eban in 1921, and the boy took his stepfather's name.

He studied Classics and Oriental languages at Queens' College, Cambridge, focusing on Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. He was a Fellow of Pembroke College from 1938 to 1939. He was active in the Federation of Zionist Youth and edited its journal, The Young Zionist.

During World War II he served as an intelligence officer in the British Army in Egypt and Jerusalem, linking British forces with the Jewish Agency. In 1945 he married Suzy Ambache, and they had two children. In 1947 he was the Jewish Agency's liaison officer to the UN Special Committee on Palestine.

After Israel was founded he represented it at the United Nations, and from 1950 to 1959 he was also ambassador to the United States. He entered the Knesset for Mapai in 1959 and served as education minister, deputy prime minister and president of the Weizmann Institute of Science. As foreign minister from 1966 to 1974, he took part in shaping UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

From 1984 to 1988 he chaired the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and in 1988 he lost his seat. He then wrote and taught, including at Princeton, Columbia and George Washington universities. He received the Israel Prize in 2001 and died in 2002.