AARON AARONSOHN

'Aaron Aaronsohn' (1876–May 15, 1919) was a renowned Romanian-born Jewish botanist, traveler, entrepreneur, and Zionist politician.

Contents

Background

Works

References

External links

Background

Aaronsohn is remembered primarily as the discoverer of wild emmer (''Triticum dicoccoides''), which he believed to be "the mother of the wheat." He was also the founder and head of Nili, a Jewish ring of spies working for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during World War I. Owing to information supplied by Nili to the British Army, General Edmund Allenby was able to mount a surprise attack on Beersheba, unexpectedly bypassing strong Ottoman defenses in Gaza.
Aaron Aaronsohn was born in Bacău, Romania, and brought to Palestine, then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, at the age of six, when his parents were among the founders of Zichron Yaakov, one of the pioneer Jewish agricultural settlements of the First Aliyah.
After his study in France, sponsored by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Aaron Aaronsohn botanically mapped Palestine and its surroundings and became a leading expert on the subject. On his 1906 field trip to Mount Hermon, he discovered ''Triticum dicoccoides'', an important find for agronomists and historians of human civilization. It made him world-famous and, on a trip to the United States, he was able to secure financial backing for a research station he established in Atlit - the first experimental station in the Levant.
After the war, Chaim Weizmann called Aaronsohn to work on the Versailles Peace Conference but Aaronsohn was killed in an airplane crash over the English Channel. His research on Eretz Israel and Transjordan flora, as well as part of his exploration diaries, were published posthumously.

Works

★ ''Agricultural and botanical explorations in Palestine'', 1910

★ ''Reliquiae Aaronsohnianae'', 1940

References

★ Chaim Herzog, ''Heroes of Israel'', 1989, Little Brown and Company, Boston ISBN 0-316-35901-7

★ Molecular Genetic Maps in Wild Emmer Wheat

★ Goldstone, Patricia. ''Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East''. San Diego: Harcourt, 2007. [August 2007]

External links

★ Biography of Aaron Aaronsohn at Zionism and Israel Information Center Biography Section