Binyamin Amirà

Binyamin Amirà was born in 1896 in Mohyliv-Podilskyi

Binyamin Amirà was born in 1896 in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, in the Russian Empire. His father Avraham was a dentist. In 1910 he moved with his family to Ottoman Palestine and attended the Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv.

He studied mathematics at the University of Geneva. From 1921 he did doctoral research at the University of Göttingen under Edmund Landau and earned his D.Sc. in 1924. He then taught briefly in Geneva as Privatdozent.

In 1925 he joined Landau in setting up the Mathematics Institute of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He became its first tenured staff member and stayed after Landau left. In August 1954 he was appointed head of the institute.

He worked to publish mathematics in Hebrew and in 1947 received the David Levson Prize for the first Hebrew book on algebraic equations. In 1951 he founded the Journal d'Analyse Mathématique, which he edited with Ze'ev Nehari and Menahem Schiffer. He also grew roses and developed a local variety in 1938.

He retired in 1960 and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1966. He died on 20 January 1968 and is buried at Har HaMenuchot.