David Faiman

David Faiman was born in 1944 in United Kingdom

David Faiman was born in 1944 in the United Kingdom. He is a grandson of Rabbi Yaakov Koppel Goldbloom, a British Zionist activist who developed the Hebrew in Hebrew teaching method.

He studied at Willesden County Grammar School and the University of London. He earned his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1969, then held post-doctoral posts in Oxford and at CERN.

Faiman came to Israel in September 1973 to work in theoretical physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. After the energy crisis that followed the Yom Kippur War, he moved his research from elementary particles to solar energy. In 1976 Amos Richmond recruited him to help found the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at Sede Boqer.

In 1977 he founded the unit that became the Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics, and in 1991 he became director of the Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center. With the Zenith Solar company he developed a sun-tracking mirrored dish that concentrated sunlight 1,000 times onto a solar array. He represented Israel on solar energy at UNESCO, the FAO and the International Energy Agency.

He led the solar center until September 2013 and retired as professor emeritus. He is married to Ofra and has 3 children. He lives in Sede Boqer in a house designed to use solar energy.