Jacob van der Hoeden

Jacob van der Hoeden was born in 1891 in Utrecht

Jacob van der Hoeden was born on 27 July 1891 in Utrecht, into a Jewish family in the Netherlands. He earned his doctorate in 1921.

From 1924 to 1929 he was a senior researcher at the Dutch national public health institute and taught veterinary medicine at Utrecht University. In 1929 he became head of the university hospital laboratories, and in 1932 he was elected to the Dutch Society for Natural Sciences. His field was diseases that pass from animals to humans.

During the Holocaust, Dutch Christians hid him and his 4 children in several places, and they survived. His wife died of illness before the end of World War II.

In 1948 Agriculture Minister Aharon Zisling of Israel's provisional government invited him to set up the Veterinary Institute in Israel. He served there until 1955, then moved to the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona, where he worked until he retired in 1966. He died in Israel in 1968 and was buried in Holon.

In 1961 he received the Israel Prize in agriculture and the Zimmerman Prize. A bacterium, Leptospira kirschneri serotype vanderhoedeni, is named after him.