Leo Picard

Leo Picard was born in 1900 in Wangen

Yehuda Leo Picard was born in 1900 in Wangen, Germany. He studied at universities in Freiburg and Berlin, and in Paris and London. He later taught at the University of Florence in Italy.

He visited the Land of Israel in 1922 and moved there in 1924, joining the Haganah on arrival. He set up the Department of Geology and the first geological collection at the Hebrew University. He married Ahuva, the youngest daughter of David Yellin.

Picard specialized in groundwater and in development options for the Negev, and chose drilling sites across the country. In 1943 he published a basic textbook on the geology of the land and proposed a theory on how the Dead Sea formed. He served on the committee that planned the National Water Carrier from 1950 to 1956.

In 1955 he became president of the UNESCO expert committee on arid areas and then worked as an international consultant in Africa and Latin America. In 1967 he founded the groundwater research center at the Hebrew University, which now bears his name. He died in 1997 at Kibbutz Ginegar and was buried there.