David Chillag

David Chillag was born in 1946 in Milan

David Chillag was born in Milan in 1946 to Holocaust survivor parents who were part of a Zionist youth group. In 1947 the group sailed on the ship Kadima, but the British seized it and held the passengers in a camp in Cyprus until February 1948, when they reached Israel. The family lived in Binyamina and Kibbutz Mavki'im before settling in Rehovot, where both parents worked as teachers.

He grew up in Rehovot, attended Tamar high school and was a member and counselor in Hashomer Hatzair. In the IDF he began pilot training but left after an accident and served in an anti-aircraft battalion.

He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Tel Aviv University in 1971 and a master's degree there a year later under Marcel Herzog. He completed a doctorate on finite group theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975, advised by Michio Suzuki. He married Nella in 1971, and they had 2 children, Orly and Yonatan.

In 1975 he joined the Technion's Faculty of Mathematics, where he published over 50 papers and 2 books and supervised graduate students. He won the Technion's excellent lecturer award year after year and received a permanent excellent lecturer title in 2010. He was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii and the University of Minnesota.

In June 2011 he was diagnosed with lymphoma, and he died on July 29, 2012. During his treatment he finished the book Introduction to Group Theory. In 2013 the Technion established the Chillag Prize for teaching by adjunct lecturers.