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Meir Lahav

Meir Lahav is an Israeli chemist and materials scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, known for his research on crystals and molecular chirality with Leslie Leiserowitz.

born 1936Research on crystal growthMolecular and macroscopic chiralityCollaboration with Leslie Leiserowitz2021 Wolf Prize in Chemistry

Born: 27 June 1936, Sofia
Occupation: chemist, materials scientist, researcher
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Weizmann Institute of Science, Harvard University

Meir Lahav was born in 1936 in Sofia

Meir Lahav was born in 1936 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He moved to Israel in 1948.

He studied chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a master's degree in polymer chemistry in 1962. He completed a doctorate at the Weizmann Institute of Science under Gerhard Schmidt. He then did postdoctoral work at Harvard University with Paul Bartlett and returned to Israel in 1971.

At the Weizmann Institute he became a full professor and later an emeritus professor. Working for many years with Leslie Leiserowitz, he studied how added impurities affect crystal growth and how to determine the chirality of molecules directly. Their work linked molecular chirality with macroscopic chirality.

He also studied crystallization at interfaces, layers of molecules that assemble themselves, and light-driven reactions inside organic solids. He received the Israel Prize in 2016 and shared the Wolf Prize in Chemistry with Leiserowitz in 2021. He is married and has 3 children.