Cheim weizmann - Term Paper Example

Weizman’s special talent in chemistry got revealed when he went to Germany and got admitted at the Polytechnic Institute of Darmstadt. Later he went to Switzerland and became a part of the University of Freiburg. The man who later displayed a successful political career was primarily engrossed with his studies at the earlier part of his life. Weizmann was awarded the doctorate in Chemistry in 1899 and two years later joined university of Geneva as an assistant lecturer. His excellence in chemistry was doing wonders in his career as in three years of time he joined University of Manchester as a senior lecturer.

In personal life Chaim Weizmann was married to Vera Weizmann and the loving couple had two sons. Tragedy struck the Weizmann family when their younger son who was by profession a pilot of a fighter plane was shot down while flying and succumbed to the accident (Krane). Before discussing the political career of this great achiever, it is worth providing little more attention towards Weizmann the chemist. As mentioned earlier that he has moved to University of Manchester as a senior lecturer in chemistry in 1904.

In 1910 he took British nationality and being a part of the Manchester University discovered how bacterial fermentation can be used to desired level to produce the determined level of similar substances. Weizmann is highly regarded as the father of industrial fermentation. The Weizmann organism or Clostridium acetobutylicum bacteria produced acetone within laboratory framework that later became important fuelling Allied war efforts (Dixon, 53). If he had contributed through the commercial production of acetone during the First World War, during the Second he got busy with synthetic rubber and high octane gasoline.

Weizmann was highly regarded in England as one of the forefront chemists of his time and both during the First and Second Great War adorned with honorary posts to the British Military. Chaim Weizmann no doubt was an active chemist who had extended his helping hands towards the allied force during the First and Second Great War; yet at heart he was a strong believer in peace and considered science as the harbinger of the same “I feel sure that science will bring to this land both peace and a renewal of its youth, creating here the springs of a new spiritual and material life.

And here I speak of science for its own sake and applied science.” (Spender 4) The academic and political career of this great soul ran on simultaneous track. While in Manchester he became a prominent Zionist leader and a regular attendee at the Zionist conferences. Weizmann is credited to have convinced the then British foreign minister Balfour (Balfour Declaration) on setting a Jewish homeland at Palestine, which was the long cherished Zionist demand. The man who later became the first President of Israel visited Palestine for the first time in 1907 (Isseroff).

Though he was one of the founding members of the Palestine Land Development Company yet his inherent leadership and upright nature gets reflected through these words “A state cannot be created by decree but by the forces of a people and in the course of generations. Even if all the governments of the world gave us a country it would only be a gift of words. But if the Jewish people will go and build Palestine, the Jewish State will become a reality—a fact.” (Weizmann and Litvinoff, 301) Weizmann like a true leader had also tried to maintain a