Yaakov Dori was the commander of the Haganah, the first Chief of Staff of the IDF, the president of the Technion and later the deputy mayor of Haifa. He was born in Odessa and immigrated with his family to the Land of Israel when he was six years old. Dori, a graduate of the city’s Reali School, was always a Haifa resident. He studied civil engineering at the University of Ghent, Belgium and graduated with honors. He was “responsible for the settlement construction plans of the Histadrut.” After concluding his role as Chief of Staff, he was appointed president of the Technion. During his term, the construction of Technion City in the Neve Sha’anan neighborhood of Haifa began, and most of the faculties began to move there from the Technion building in the Hadar Hacarmel neighborhood. Under his management, the Technion expanded significantly, and in the late 1950s included not only a new campus, but also new faculties such as the Faculty of Industrial and Management Engineering, the Faculty of Aeronautical Engineering, the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, and more.
After about 15 years as a dominant president of the Technion, he turned to politics. He joined the “Rafi” party [an acronym for Reshimat Poalei Yisrael, the Israeli Workers List] and ran for mayor of Haifa on its behalf. In 1959 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government. Dori died in 1973 and was buried in the military cemetery in Haifa. His son Zvi Dori was a chemistry professor at the Technion and one of the founders and director of Madatech, Israel National Museum of Science, Technology and Space.