Eitan Friedman

Eitan Friedman was born in 1953 in Tel Aviv

Eitan Friedman was born in Tel Aviv on February 11, 1953. In 1971 he joined the IDF through the academic reserve track. He graduated from the Tel Aviv University medical school in 1977.

In July 1981 he served as a military doctor with the Paratroopers Brigade and was badly wounded in Operation Tziltzal while treating wounded soldiers. He trained in internal medicine at Sheba from 1982 to 1987 and did molecular biology research at the US National Institutes of Health from 1987 to 1992. He earned a PhD from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

In 1995 he founded the oncogenetics unit at Sheba Medical Center, which tested for gene mutations linked to inherited breast and ovarian cancer. He became a full professor at Tel Aviv University in 1999. In 2015 he led, with Jamal Zidan, a genetic study of the Druze genome.

He has hosted health programs on Israeli television and wrote children's books and a 2018 autobiography. In February 2021 his work with Sheba ended, and in July 2021 he founded the Center for Genetics and Early Detection at Assuta. On July 30, 1993 he swam the English Channel solo, and in 2021 he crossed it again in a relay team.