Aharon Razin

Aharon Razin was born in 1935 in Tel Aviv

Aharon Razin was born in Tel Aviv in 1935 and grew up in Petah Tikva. His parents came to the Land of Israel in 1926, and his father founded and ran a cooperative for craftsmen. He finished school at the Brenner school in Petah Tikva.

After school he joined the IDF and served in the Golani reconnaissance unit. He then studied physics and mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and moved to biochemistry for his master's degree. He completed his PhD in 1967 and did postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology from 1968 to 1970.

On his return he joined the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine. He studied DNA methylation, found the enzyme activity behind it, and examined methylation patterns in fetal development and gene imprinting. He headed the Department of Cellular Biochemistry from 1980 to 1984 and the Institute of Biochemistry from 1985 to 1989.

He received the Israel Prize in 2004 and the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2008 with Howard Cedar. He later won the EMET Prize, the Gairdner Award and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize. He died in 2019 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.