In a welcome reprise of a gift he gave last year, American Nobel laureate Albert Sabin has again bequeathed a large sum to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot for solar energy research.
Sabin, a former president of the institute and renowned for developing the oral polio vaccine, donated $120,000, which represents the proceeds of awards he recently received from Italian sources: the Abano Terme Quality of Life Prize and the Sanremo Laboratoria Farmaceutico CT Prize.
Last October, Sabin, a doctor, virologist and microbiologist, surprised Weizmann officials at their annual dinner in New York by presenting the institute with $500,000 for solar energy research.
Sabin, who was president of the institute from 1970 to 1972, is an American Jew who was born in Bialystok, Russia, in 1906.
The Italian awards were given to Sabin in recognition of the many millions of people his vaccine saved from polio, a crippling and sometimes fatal illness. He was also cited for his efforts to provide a better quality of life for children in poor countries, and for being a “true benefactor of humanity.”
Sabin stipulated that his donation to the Weizmann Institute be used specifically for the development of a commercially useful technology for converting the sun’s energy into transportable and storable chemical energy.
Explaining what prompted him to fund solar energy, Sabin said, “I believe that the earliest possible development of a suitable technology for replacing the exhaustible, polluting fossil fuels by inexhaustible, clean solar energy is of the greatest importance to the whole world.
In a telephone conversation with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Sabin, who lives in Washington, said, “This is the biggest challenge for the ultimate, complete transformation from fossil fuels. It is important not only for the world at large but also for Israel and the Weizmann Institute itself.”
(JTA staff writer Susan Birnbaum in New York contributed to this report.)
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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.
