Yehuda Melamed

Yehuda Melamed was born in 1943 in Rehovot

Yehuda Melamed was born in Rehovot in 1943 to Yosef and Esther. His father came to the Land of Israel from eastern Poland, and his mother was born in Rehovot. He went to school in Rehovot.

He joined the IDF in 1961 and served in the paratroopers and the Shaked reconnaissance unit. He studied geology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1965, then joined the first class of the Tel Aviv University medical school in 1966. He qualified as a physician in 1972.

After the Yom Kippur War he left surgical training to focus on diving medicine. From 1974 to 1982 he organized the treatment of diving injuries in Sinai. He helped write the diving rules that formed the basis of the 1979 sport diving law.

He founded the Israel Naval Medical Institute and led it for 20 years. In 1982 the Ministry of Health recognized it, with Rambam, as the national institute for diving and hyperbaric medicine. He was certified as a diving physician by the Israeli and U.S. navies.

After retiring in 1995 he set up hyperbaric centers at Elisha and Rambam hospitals, working there from 1996 to 2018. In 1998 he also set up the hyperbaric center at Shamir Medical Center.