Dr. George Wise, Chancellor of Tel Aviv University and its first president, died at the Mount Sinai Medical Center here Thursday at the age of 81. Funeral services are scheduled for Sunday at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York.
Wise, an industrialist, scholar and philanthropist, became president of Tel Aviv University in 1963 when it consisted of a temporary campus on the outskirts of Jaffa with an enrollment of 1,200 students and a faculty of 150. Under his guidance over the next eight years the student body grew to 12,000 and the faculty to over 1,000. A new campus at Ramat Aviv contained more than 30 buildings.
Wise created two successful business enterprises, the George S. Wise Co. and the Inter-American Paper Corp., both of which manufactured and distributed newsprint. His major interest for most of his life was education. He served as chairman of the board of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1953-62. He is commemorated there by the Wise Auditorium.
Wise was born in Poland and immigrated to the United States in 1926. He held a doctoral degree in sociology from Columbia University. He was a Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at the University of Miami; a member of its Board of Governors; a trustee of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation; and a member of the Board of Governors and Executive Committee of Mt. Sinai Medical Center, where he established the Post-Graduate Mini-Residencies Program which bears his name.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
