Shmuel Horowitz

Shmuel Horowitz was born in 1901 in Vilnius County

Shmuel Horowitz was born on 12 September 1901 in the Russian Empire. He studied in Minsk and later in Moscow. The poet Saul Tchernichovsky rented a room in his home, and the two talked often.

In 1917 his sister was murdered by an antisemitic gang in Ukraine. In 1924 he was arrested for Zionist activity and spent a few months in prison. He then moved to the Land of Israel and was a member of Kibbutz Gesher until 1926.

He went on to study at the College of Agriculture in Berlin. Back in the country, he worked for many years at the agricultural research station in Rehovot and was among its founders. His work focused on field crops and on adapting plants such as peanuts, grains and legumes to local farming.

In 1953 he became a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in 1964 he was named Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture. From 1960 to 1971 he sat on the Council for Higher Education. He later turned down an offer to serve as Israel's ambassador to the Philippines. He died in 1999.