Selig Soskin

Selig Soskin was born in 1873 in Priozerne

Soskin was born in 1873 in Churubash, Crimea, in the Russian Empire, to Yehezkel and Rachel. He studied agronomy at the agricultural college in Berlin and later earned a doctorate at the University of Rostock. He was active in Zionist student and national groups.

In 1896 he moved to Ottoman Palestine for Hovevei Zion and helped found Be'er Tuvia. He managed eucalyptus planting to drain the Hadera swamps. In 1898 he accompanied Theodor Herzl on his visit, and in 1903 he joined the Committee for the Study of Eretz Israel, which sent him to El Arish.

From 1906 to 1915 he was an agricultural adviser in German South West Africa. From 1918 to 1923 he headed the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund. He developed a model of intensive farming on small plots and tried it in the Binyamina area.

In 1926 he joined the Revisionist movement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and after its 1933 split he joined the Jewish State Party. In 1934 he led the company that founded Nahariya, where his model was put into practice. He later promoted hydroponics and set up a station in Ramat Gan in 1945.

He received the Israel Prize for agriculture in 1958. He died in Tel Aviv in 1959 and was buried in Nahariya, where a street bears his name.