George S. Wise

George S. Wise was born in 1906 in Pinsk

George Schneiweis, later Wise, was born in 1906 in Pinsk, in the Russian Empire. He came to the Land of Israel and was a member of Kibbutz Gan Shmuel. After falling ill with tuberculosis, he moved to the United States in 1926.

He graduated from Furman University in 1928 and continued his studies at Columbia University. He earned a doctorate in sociology there in 1950. His research dealt with Antonio Guzmán Blanco, a 19th century ruler of Venezuela, and with caudillo rule in Latin America.

Wise taught sociology at Columbia from 1930 to 1952. He also owned newsprint companies and was active in the paper industry in Mexico, where he founded 30 schools. In 1949 Mexico gave him the Order of the Aztec Eagle.

He chaired the board of governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1953 and helped raise funds for its new campus. In 1963 he became president of Tel Aviv University, where he reorganized its structure and created a senate. New faculties were set up during his term, which ended in 1971.

Wise was a founder of Klal Israel and later taught international relations at the University of Miami. He died of heart failure in Miami Beach in 1987. The Wise Observatory and the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University bear his name.