Shimon Fritz Bodenheimer

Shimon Fritz Bodenheimer was born in 1897 in Cologne

Bodenheimer was born in Cologne in 1897 to a Jewish family. His father, Max Bodenheimer, was a lawyer and Zionist activist. At 17 he wrote a study of the poet Sappho.

He began studying at the University of Munich in 1914, but World War I stopped his studies, and he served on the Eastern Front. After the war he studied at the University of Bonn under Richard Hesse and earned his doctorate in 1921. He also worked on scale insects at the Hamburg natural history museum.

He moved to the Land of Israel in 1922 and headed the entomology department at an agricultural experiment station in Tel Aviv. He mapped farm pests and brought scientific methods to pest control. In 1923 he married Rachel, daughter of Menahem Ussishkin.

In 1928 he joined the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and became a professor in 1931. He advised the agriculture ministries of Turkey and Iraq and published a catalog of the animals of the Land of Israel in 1937. He wrote about 420 papers and books on insects and the history of biology.

From 1950 he led the Israeli society for the history of science and medicine. He received the Israel Prize in agriculture in 1954. He died in London in 1959 after an eye operation and was buried in the Sanhedria cemetery.