Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Weizmann was born in 1874 in Motal, near Pinsk, and became a chemist at the University of Manchester. During the First World War his fermentation process for producing acetone, needed for British explosives, brought him close to the British leadership, including Arthur Balfour, whom he had first met in 1906. His diplomacy was central to the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, in which Britain backed "a national home for the Jewish people" in the Land of Israel. At the 1907 Zionist Congress he called for "Synthetic Zionism", combining diplomacy with practical settlement.

He led the World Zionist Organization from 1920 to 1931 and again from 1935 to 1946. He laid the cornerstone of the Hebrew University in 1918 and in 1934 founded the Daniel Sieff Research Institute in Rehovot, renamed the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1949. In 1948 he helped persuade President Truman to recognize Israel. In 1949 he was elected Israel's first president, and he served until his death in 1952.