Ladislaus Farkas

Ladislaus Farkas was born in 1904 in Dunajská Streda

Farkas was born in 1904 in Dunajská Streda, then part of Austria-Hungary, to a pharmacist father. In 1908 the family moved to Nagyvárad in Transylvania, where his father ran a pharmacy. The family attended a Neolog synagogue.

He attended the Gymnasium in Oradea and then studied in Vienna. In Berlin he joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1924, studying under Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer. He earned his doctorate in 1928 and became an assistant to Fritz Haber.

In 1933 he was dismissed from the institute under a German law aimed at removing Jews from the civil service. He moved to Palestine in 1935 and founded the physical chemistry department at the Hebrew University, which he directed until his death. During World War II his group supported the British war effort, and from 1942 he was secretary of the scientific advisory committee of the War Supply Council.

In 1940 he married Hannah Aharoni, a microbiologist, and they had 2 daughters. His parents and niece were murdered in the Holocaust. On December 31, 1948, he was killed when a flight to the United States crashed at Monte Argentario in Italy, and he was buried on Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.