Heinrich Mendelssohn

Heinrich Mendelssohn was born in 1910 in Berlin

Mendelssohn was born in Berlin in 1910. His father was a merchant, and his mother came from an assimilated Jewish family from Katowice. As a youth he took part in the Zionist movements Kadima and Blau Weiss.

He studied medicine and zoology at Humboldt University from 1928 to 1933. After the Nazis came to power he moved to the Land of Israel and continued his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1936 he was among the first graduates of its Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and his doctorate dealt with birds of the Land of Israel.

He joined the Biological-Pedagogical Institute in Tel Aviv and became its director in 1947. He helped found Tel Aviv University, where he was the first dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences and the first vice president. He founded its zoology department, developed its zoological collections and ran its zoological garden, where he kept endangered species.

He took part in declaring the first nature reserve and in founding the Nature Reserves Authority and the Society for the Protection of Nature. In the 1940s he and Heinz Steinitz discovered the Hula painted frog in Lake Hula. He died in 2002 and was buried at Ramot HaShavim.