Menachem Lewin

Menachem Lewin was born in 1918 in Sokoły

Menachem Lewin was born in Poland in 1918. He studied in Białystok and finished high school in Łódź. He joined the Betar youth movement in 1926 and helped organize Ze'ev Jabotinsky's lectures in Łódź from 1935 to 1937.

In 1937 he moved to Palestine to study chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He joined the Irgun and helped set up an underground weapons laboratory. Arrested by the British in 1939, he was sentenced to 4 years of hard labor.

After his release he resumed his studies, earning an MSc in 1945 and a PhD in 1947. He then served in the Hemed science corps and the IDF until 1950.

In 1950 he helped found the Research Council of Israel with Shmuel Sambursky. He studied plant fibers as raw materials, renewed flax growing in Israel and surveyed wild plants of the Arava, leading to a juncus plantation near Yotvata. He later led research at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and held 29 patents.

He was married to Esther Rachel and had three children. He died in Jerusalem in 2011 and was buried on Har HaMenuchot.