Shlomo Pines

Shlomo Pines was born in 1908 in Charenton-le-Pont

Pines was born in 1908 in Charenton-le-Pont near Paris. His father, Meir Pines, was a scholar and a leader of a Zionist socialist workers' party. The family lived in Riga and Arkhangelsk, moved to England in 1919 and settled in Germany in 1921.

He studied philosophy, Semitic languages and linguistics at the universities of Heidelberg, Geneva and Berlin. He earned his doctorate in Berlin in 1934 with a study of the Islamic theory of atoms. Among his friends in Berlin was Leo Strauss.

From 1937 to 1939 he taught the history of science in Islamic countries at an institute in Paris. There he married Fanny Rirhovsky, and in 1940 the family left for the Land of Israel. During World War II he worked for the imperial censorship office, and after the state was founded he worked at the Foreign Ministry.

In 1952 he joined the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, teaching Jewish thought and philosophy. His English translation of the Guide of the Perplexed appeared in 1963. In 1971 he drew attention to a 10th-century Arabic version of a passage by Josephus.

He became a full professor in 1961 and retired as professor emeritus in 1977. He died in 1990 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.