Yechiel Becker

Yechiel Becker was born in 1931 in Rokach Hospital (Hadassah)

Yechiel Becker was born in 1931 at Hadassah Hospital in Tel Aviv. His mother, Esther, came to the country in 1924, and his father, Elimelech, came in 1925. At age 3 he moved with his family to Ramat Gan, where he attended Ohel Shem high school.

During his last year of high school, when the War of Independence began, he was drafted and served in the Artillery Corps. In 1949 he received a 6 month leave to finish school. He completed his service in 1951 as an artillery officer.

He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning a master's degree in microbiology and biochemistry in 1955. He completed a doctorate in virology in 1960 on the effect of the polio virus on cell cultures. From 1962 to 1964 he worked at MIT and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Back at the Hebrew University he founded the laboratory for molecular virology and later a separate department of molecular virology, becoming a full professor. In 1987 he founded the journal Virus Genes and served as one of its 2 chief editors. He wrote 6 scientific books, including a 1968 Hebrew book on molecular virology.

He retired in 1999 but kept doing research and published an autobiography in 2010. He was married to Miriam, a teacher, from 1955, and had 3 children. He died in March 2014.