Hillel Oppenheimer

Hillel Oppenheimer was born in 1899 in Berlin

Oppenheimer was born Heinz Reinhard Oppenheimer in Berlin in 1899. His father, Franz Oppenheimer, was a sociologist and economist whose plan for cooperative settlement led to the founding of Merhavia in 1911.

He studied botany in Berlin, Frankfurt and Freiburg, and earned his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1922. His research showed that the pulp of juicy fruits holds substances that stop seeds from sprouting inside the fruit. He also studied gardening and worked in commercial nurseries.

In 1925 he immigrated to Mandate Palestine at the invitation of Selig Suskin and set up a nursery near the Kabara swamps. From 1926 he cared for the plant collection of Aaron Aaronsohn in Zichron Yaacov, and in 1930 he published a book on the plants of Transjordan.

In 1931 he joined the botany department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and helped found its faculties of natural science and agriculture. He headed departments at the Agricultural Research Station in Rehovot, became a professor in 1949, and was dean of the Faculty of Agriculture from 1953 to 1954. His research focused on water balance in plants and their resistance to drought.

He received the Israel Prize in 1959 and died in 1971. A road in Rehovot is named after him and his cousin Chanan.