Leo Aryeh Mayer

Leo Aryeh Mayer was born in 1895 in Ivano-Frankivsk

Mayer was born in 1895 in Stanisławów, Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary and now Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine. He came from a family of Hasidic rabbis.

In 1913 he began studying Eastern art at the University of Vienna, focusing on the Muslim East, and received his doctorate in 1917. He also trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Vienna and was active in the Zionist Hashomer movement.

After teaching and working as a librarian in Vienna, he returned home in 1919 to teach high school. Unrest after World War I led him to Berlin, where he worked in the oriental department of the state library.

He moved to Mandate Palestine in 1921 and worked in the Department of Antiquities as an inspector and later as director of the archives. In 1925 he joined the first staff of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University, became a full professor in 1932, and served as rector from 1943 to 1945. He also led excavations of the Third Wall of Jerusalem with Eleazar Sukenik.

From 1940 to 1950 he was president of the Israel Exploration Society. He died in Jerusalem in 1959, and the museum of Islamic art in Jerusalem bears his name.