Eviatar Nevo

Eviatar Nevo was born in 1929 in Tel Aviv

Eviatar Nevo was born in 1929 in Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv. His father, David Levitas, came to the Land of Israel in 1913 and worked in farming and teaching. His mother, Leah, came from the Goldis family of Tiberias, and her younger brother was the composer David Zehavi.

He studied at the Bialik school and at the Herzliya Gymnasium, and joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. He worked with animals under Yehoshua Margolin and Heinrich Mendelssohn. He later earned a master's degree in 1958 and a doctorate in 1964 in biology at the Hebrew University.

He fought in the War of Independence and in 1948 helped found Kibbutz Sa'ar. He helped found the biology department at the Oranim seminary and taught there from 1952 to 1963. He also took part in geological mapping of the Negev and, in 1956, of Sinai.

In 1973 he joined the University of Haifa and founded its Institute of Evolution, which he led until 2008. His research covers speciation and the effect of climate and environment on evolution, including studies of wild wheat and wild barley. In 1994 he named a site on Mount Carmel Evolution Canyon.

He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, elected in 2000. He received the Israel Prize in 2016.