Bella Kaufman

Bella Kaufman was born in 1956 in Jerusalem

Bella Kaufman was born on September 11, 1956, in Jerusalem, where she grew up. She attended the Rehavia Gymnasium and finished in 1974. She was married to Yossi, a computer science lecturer, and they had a son and a daughter and lived in Kiryat Ono.

In 1977 she began medical studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem medical school, and she received her MD in 1984. From 1985 to 1990 she trained in oncology and radiotherapy at Hadassah Medical Center.

She joined Sheba Medical Center in 2001, where she directed the Breast Oncology Institute and headed the oncology division. She was a professor at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University and studied hereditary breast cancer. Her research led in 2018 to the first drug for cancer patients who carry the BRCA gene.

From 2008 she served on the research committee of the Israel Cancer Association, and she chaired Physicians for Human Rights. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, and it returned in 2012. She died of the disease on May 13, 2021, and was buried in Tel Mond.