Ernst David Bergmann Dead at 71

Funeral services were held here yesterday for Prof. Ernst David Bergmann, former chairman of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission who died at Hadassah Hospital of a heart ailment at the age of 71. President Ephraim Katzir who had worked for years with Prof. Bergmann at the Weizmann Institute of Science, described him as “Israel’s greatest scientist.” He was also known as “the man who gave Israel the atom.” He was buried at Har Hamenuchot cemetery.

Throughout his long career as a scientist, lecturer and teacher Prof. Bergmann viewed science as the means that would enable Israel and the Jewish people to offset the superior numbers of their enemies. He consistently urged the mobilization of science for the defense of the Jewish people and “to avoid another Holocaust.”

Prof. Bergmann was born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1903 and 30 years later, while in London, joined Dr. Chaim Weizmann in scientific work. He was placed in charge of the Scientific Institute in Rehovot and was named its first director when it became the Weizmann Institute of Science in the early 1930s. He was its director general in 1951 when he resigned to become a professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Prof. Bergmann was named director of defense research of the Israeli Defense Ministry in 1948. He was a member of the Israel Academy of Science; chairman of the National Council for Space Research; honorary chairman of the Israel Chemistry Society; and a member of the National Council for Research and Development in addition to heading the Atomic Energy Commission. in 1968 he won the “Israel Defense Prize.” He served as vice-president of the Hebrew University until two weeks before his death on Sunday.