Manfred Aschner

Manfred Aschner was born in 1901 in Racibórz

Aschner was born in 1901 in Racibórz, then part of Germany. In 1923 he studied at the Agricultural College in Berlin, which was linked to Humboldt University.

In 1924 he moved to the Land of Israel and worked as a pioneer. Professor Theodor then invited him to a malaria research unit in Haifa. In 1926 Professor Israel Kligler brought him to the Hebrew University, where he studied diseases carried by insects.

He earned a doctorate from the University of Breslau on the relations between bacteria and flies. He joined the Hebrew University's Department of Hygiene and Bacteriology and became a lecturer in 1945. In 1946 he and Professor Carl Reich found a new algae species, Prymnesium parvum, as the cause of fish deaths in fishponds.

During the War of Independence truce he volunteered for the Science Corps and worked on typhus vaccines. In 1956 he joined the new food and biotechnology faculty at the Technion and moved to Haifa. That year he won the Israel Prize and asked to give it to the Magen Fund.

He retired in 1970 and became professor emeritus. In 1973 he stopped active research to care for his sick wife. He died in 1989.