Aviezri Fraenkel

Aviezri Fraenkel was born in 1929 in Munich

Fraenkel was born in Munich in 1929 to a Jewish family, the son of Yoel and Esther Fraenkel. The family moved to Basel, Switzerland, after the Nazis came to power, and later settled in Jerusalem. After elementary school at Horev he worked as an electrician for 3 years.

He began electrical engineering studies at the Technion, which were interrupted by the War of Independence, when he took part in the defense of Safed with the Haganah. He finished his studies after the war and served in the Signal Corps.

In 1953 he joined the Weizmann Institute of Science and helped build WEIZAC, the first computer built in Israel. He earned a PhD in mathematics from UCLA in 1961 and returned to the Weizmann Institute mathematics department in 1962. His research covers combinatorial games, number theory and computational complexity.

He conceived the Responsa Project, a full text search system for Jewish legal texts, and led it from 1963 to 1974. He helped establish the mathematics and computer science department at Bar-Ilan University and moved the project there. The project received the Israel Prize in 2007.

He married Shaula in 1956 and they have 6 children. His grandson Yaacov Naftali Fraenkel was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas members in June 2014. In 2018 he lit a torch at the ceremony for Israel's 70th Independence Day.