The Technion Timeline
Scroll through to see Technion's 100 years of achievements
Technion brought aboard professors and scientists who immigrated from Germany. They founded the Technological Department from which arose the faculties of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering.
Arthur Wauchope was born into a British noble family in 1874. He attended Brampton School and in 1893 joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He fought in the Second Boer War and was seriously wounded in 1899 at Magersfontein. From 1903 to 1914, he served in British India. At the outbreak of World War I, he was stationed on the Western Front in Loos. In 1916, he was transferred with his battalion to Iraq. Wauchope was wounded in battle and was later appointed as a battalion commander, continuing to fight. In 1923, he was a military representative in Australia and…Read More
In 1936, Dr. Shlomo Brardin, the director of Bosmat, presented the need for establishing a maritime school as part of the settlement’s awakening to the conquest of the sea and Hebrew labor. On October 18, 1938, according to Dr. Brardin’s vision, a new school was established within the premises of the vocational school in Hadar HaCarmel. The school operated under the same Technion administration and was named “The Maritime School of the Technion in Haifa.” The school’s motto at its opening was “No redemption for the people without redemption of the sea.” In 1954, the school separated from the Technion…Read More
A few days after the outbreak of war, David Ben-Gurion declared that “We must help the (British) army as if there was no White Book, and we must fight in the White Book as if there were no war.” Indeed, little by little the number of recruits from the Yishuv in the Land of Israel increased. Among the recruits were students and graduates of the Technion. Starting in June 1940, many of them were recruited into the British Corps of Engineers, thanks to their professional training. The fact that the members of this corps were involved in the movement of…Read More
Albert Einstein fled to the USA from the Nazi regime in 1933. He continued to support the Technion and on May 8, 1940, the American Technion Society was officially founded. Technion Societies in Israel and around the world raise funds to support the research activities that take place at the Technion, and assist students through scholarships, etc. The American Technion Society is one of the most significant in its contribution to the Technion.
“During World War II, as part of the settlement’s war effort, the Solel Boneh Company RE 745 was established. It included many students and graduates of the Technion, and its commander was Dov Givon, a graduate of the Technion, sixth cohort, 1932/3. In September-October 1942, a course was held for officers from the Solel Boneh Company at the base of the Royal Engineers, The Hague. Sitting from left to right: Major Dov Gideon (Haimovitsh), Major B. Wright – Commander of the Land of Israel branch, Lieutenant E. Tinter. Standing from left to right: Mr. Y. Stolovsky, Mr. L. Bodenkin, Mr.…Read More
With the approach of fighting in North Africa and towards Egypt, the fear of a German occupation of the Land of Israel rose in the settlement. Due to this concern it was decided that the British Army should be given all possible assistance. The Technion made its workshops available to the British Army, and students and faculty worked to repair British equipment and supply spare parts.
On March 18, 1946, two members of the Anglo-American Committee visited the Technion. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Affairs of the Land of Israel was a committee tasked with proposing a solution to the question of the Land of Israel and the problem of displaced Jews in Europe. The committee took a journey that started in Washington, passed through London, continued to the displaced persons camps in Europe, to Cairo and Riyadh, and ended in the Land of Israel. Throughout the journey, the committee collected testimonies and opinions from all parties involved in the situation of the Jews…Read More
Abigail Weinbrand participated in a demonstration in Haifa against the British immigration policy, which prevented Holocaust survivors and refugees from immigrating to the Land of Israel. Abigail was the Technion’s first casualty in the struggle for immigration to the Land of Israel and was 19 years old when she died. At the end of July 1946, a small ship left the port of La Ciotat in France on its way to the Land of Israel; on board were 758 refugees, most of them Holocaust survivors, including 40 pregnant women and dozens of patients in need of medical treatment. The name…Read More
Henry Wallace, Vice President of the United States in the years 1941-1945 and a world-renowned researcher in the field of agronomy, came on a tour of Israel for the purpose of research on the impact of agriculture on world peace. Wallace was the US Secretary of Agriculture for seven years, until he was chosen as President Roosevelt’s vice president. Due to the great interest aroused by his visit to Israel, many journalists accompanied him. The first agricultural site of his visit was Kibbutz Beit HaArava. At the end of his visit, Wallace said to the members of the kibbutz: “I…Read More
The first Independence Day was celebrated at the Technion on May 20, 1948, about a week after Ben Gurion’s announcement, at a joint meeting of the executive committee, professors, and teachers. Shlomo Kaplansky, the director of the Technion, gave a speech in which he referred to the magnitude of the hour and the regret for the absence of many of the students. Most of the students had been drafted and were on active duty in the war that took place during those very days. It was Kaplansky’s second speech within six months that referred to the magnitude of the hour;…Read More
Today, Sunday, the twenty-third day of the month of Iyar, in the year 5709 since the creation of the world, May 22, 1949 – in the second year of Israel’s independence under the presidency of Chaim Weizmann, in the tenth year since the outbreak of World War II, which brought upon the Jewish people in the Diaspora the Holocaust that annihilated six million of our people, and in the twenty-fifth year of the Hebrew Technion, a cornerstone was laid here in the city of Haifa, in the upper courtyard of the Technion, established with the assistance of the Brigadier P.…Read More
This is the first class to graduate after the establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence, and most of the graduates arrived while they were still in uniform. At the ceremony, four diplomas were awarded posthumously, to graduates who were killed.
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…Read More
The Technion logo as it is known today, first appeared officially on an Israel postage stamp issued in 1956. The stamp was issued to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Technion opening its first class in 1924. The Technion logo was apparently chosen as part of a competition. On June 1, 1951, the Technion Symbol Committee announced a “competition” and invited proposals for a symbol for the Technion. More than twenty proposals were presented to the committee by architects, engineers, artists, tailors, and ordinary people. The Technion Symbol Committee included the Technion’s director at the time, Yaakov Dori, Prof. Y.…Read More
In 1952, the Faculty of Science was established as part of the Technion’s expansion plan, and the Department of Physics was established as part of the faculty. The first head of the Department of Physics was Professor Nathan Rosen. A number of researchers such as David Bohm joined the department after leaving the United States during the period of McCarthyism. The first six students graduated in 1956. In that year, the dean of the faculty was Professor Kurt Sitte, born in Czechoslovakia, a world-renowned scientist in the field of cosmic rays. In 1960, an indictment was filed against Sitte for…Read More
The first doctoral dissertation at the Technion was submitted by Eliezer Mishkin, from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of Prof. Franz Ollendorff, in June 1951. The title of the thesis: “Direct Calculation of Induction Motors Based on Maxwell’s Field Equations.” Mishkin was awarded the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences at the academic year opening ceremony in November 1952.
Rachel Shalon was a professor of civil engineering at the Technion and the first female engineer in the Land of Israel. Shalon was born as Rachel Znamirowska in Kalush, Poland, to a Hasidic family. She finished high school in Warsaw, after which she studied chemical engineering at the Polytechnic. In 1925 she came on a tourist visit to the Land of Israel, was fascinated by the place and decided to stay. She was accepted to the Technion, studied chemical engineering and became a faculty member. In 1952, as mentioned, she was the first woman was awarded the rank of professor…Read More
In 1952, the Technion approved the first doctoral thesis submitted at the academic institution, by a graduate of the faculty.
The Faculty of Aeronautics was the first faculty established on the new Technion campus in Neve Sha’anan.
On April 21, 1953, the cornerstone was laid for the Faculty of Aeronautical Engineering Building, which was also the cornerstone for the establishment of the Technion campus in Neve Sha’anan. The Faculty of Aeronautical Engineering was the first faculty established on the new Technion campus in Neve Sha’anan. The establishment of the Faculty of Aeronautical Engineering at the Technion was initiated shortly after the establishment of the state with the support of then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who understood that its establishment was essential to Israel’s security. The establishment of the faculty was led from the academic side by…Read More
As early as 1937, the Technion gave courses in agricultural engineering. The Technion’s agriculture program provided technical assistance to the agricultural settlements and kibbutzim. The Hydraulics Department researchers helped turn aquaculture – fishponds – into industry. In 1953, the department of agricultural engineering was established by Walter Clay Lowdermilk. Lowdermilk, born in the United States, studied geology and forestry, and in 1938 he was sent on a research trip to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. He was not Jewish and had scant knowledge about Zionism. After seeing the Jewish settlement in Israel and its contribution to the preservation…Read More
After the selection of the area in which the campus would be expanded, the design of the new Technion City was entrusted to Alexander Klein. Klein was not only a professor of architecture at the Technion and the founder and head of the city planning division in the Faculty of Architecture at the Technion, but also one of the leading city planners in Israel and around the world. In Russia, his homeland, he designed workers’ housing, hospitals, clubs and community centers. At the same time, he participated in and won international competitions. In 1920, his family immigrated to Germany, where…Read More
Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Jewish Danish physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1922), and one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century. He contributed significantly to understanding the structure of the atom and was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics. Bohr was also an outstanding footballer. He visited Israel several times and was in contact with Technion scientists.
In 1954 Prof. David Ginsburg was assigned the task of developing the Technion’s Department of Chemistry which included a number of researchers in the fields of analytical and physical chemistry. After a period of development and establishment, the Technion’s basic science departments – chemistry, physics and mathematics – received the status of faculties. In 1959 the Faculty of Industrial Chemistry merged with the Faculty of Chemistry. The faculties were separated again in 1962, all faculty members from the Faculty of Industrial Chemistry (except one) remained in the Faculty of Chemistry. In 1964, the Faculty of Chemistry moved to the Bernstein,…Read More
In November 1954, a gala dinner sponsored by the Technion was held at the Savoy Hotel in London in honor of Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill, with the participation of important figures in English Jewry.