Dr. Leo Picard, professor of geology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been chosen by the United Nations to head a UNESCO technical assistance mission to Turkey, it was announced today by Dr. George S. Wise, president of the American Friends of the Hebrew University. Prof. Picard, who is Israel’s foremost geologist, is the first Israeli scientist ever to receive such an assignment.
The technical team, which will be responsible for both instruction and research in hydrogeology, will organize and develop teaching and research at the Technical University in Istanbul. Actual field work in the location of underground water supplies will be planned by Dr. Picard when he arrives in Turkey.
The UNESCO assignment is not Prof. Picard’s first contribution to the material benefit of countries other than Israel. In 1945 he undertook a trip to Argentina at the request of the Argentine Government to conduct a country-wide survey of water, oil and mineral resources. Prof. Picard, who was born in Germany, was educated at the Universities of Frieberg, Berlin, Bonn and London. He was serving in the department of geology at the University of Florence in 1924, when he came to Palestine as consulting geologist to the Zionist Executive. He has devoted his attention to the country’s underground resources ever since.
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