Sara Hestrin-Lerner

Sara Hestrin-Lerner was born in 1918 in Winnipeg

Hestrin-Lerner was born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1918. Her parents, Yosef and Miriam Hestrin, took part in Zionist activity in their area and hosted labor movement figures such as Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi and Zalman Shazar. The family moved to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1932.

In Palestine her father served as secretary of the Jewish Agency's political department and as head of the agricultural institute. Her brother, Shlomo Hestrin, became a professor of biochemistry and won the Israel Prize in exact sciences in 1957.

She studied zoology and earned a doctorate in pathological physiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was among the first academic staff of the university's physiology department.

Her joint research with Binyamin Shapira on glucose absorption earned them both the Israel Prize for medical science in 1955. In 1961 she spent a sabbatical working with Professor Hokin at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She died in 2017.