Ora Kedem

Ora Kedem was born in 1924 in Vienna

Ora Kedem was born Josefa Katz in Vienna in 1924, the youngest of 3 children. Her father was a merchant and her mother ran a workshop for children's clothing. After the 1938 Anschluss, antisemitism grew and the family businesses were closed.

In 1940 she and her parents sailed down the Danube to Romania and reached Haifa in October. They survived the Patria ship, where she saved her sick mother and another woman. They were then held in the British camp at Atlit, where she taught herself Hebrew.

She first trained as a teacher at the Levinsky Seminary, then turned to physical chemistry. She won a prize in the Hebrew University entrance exams and completed her first and second degrees there. During her studies she joined the Haganah and later its Science Corps, where she met her husband Avraham Kedem.

She joined the polymer research department at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in a group led by Aharon Katzir. She developed a mathematical theory of transport through biological membranes, and she and Katzir received the 1961 Israel Prize for it. She worked at Leiden University in 1958 and at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1964, and in the late 1960s turned to water desalination.

She was also a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In 2005 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. She had 2 children, Ilana and Michael, and died in 2026.