Alexander Zarchin

Alexander Zarchin was born in 1897 in Zolotonosha

Alexander Zarchin was born in 1897 in Ukraine. His father, Moshe Shmuel, was an industrialist, and the family was Zionist and traditional. He studied industrial chemistry and specialized in metallurgy.

While studying, he received funds from the Russian government to build a pilot plant for producing magnesium. He named the plan with a Hebrew acronym for a verse from Isaiah about Zion. In 1934 he was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison.

In World War II he fought in the Soviet army against the Nazis. After the war he reached West Germany and moved to the Land of Israel in the summer of 1947. There he worked on seawater desalination, fuel from bitumen and magnesium chloride from the Dead Sea.

In 1961 the government, an American company and Zarchin set up a desalination company, renamed in 1965 and later known as IDE Technologies. A plant using his freezing method opened in Eilat and began supplying water in June 1964, but it proved costly and closed. Zarchin sued the state for royalties, and the Supreme Court granted him royalties only on the Eilat plant.

Zarchin died in 1988. Streets in Ra'anana and Beersheba were named after him.