About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
What’s one of the first things you do when you get to the ocean? It’s probably to take a deep breath, inhaling the instantly familiar smell that inspires calm, evokes memories, and lets you know exactly where you are.
Every other breath you take is provided by the ocean, which supplies half of the entire planet’s oxygen. It is Earth’s life support system: it regulates our climate, feeds us and innumerable other species, and its health and well-being are critical to maintaining our own – yet we do not behave as though it is.
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—July 19, 2021—Until recently, before NASA’s Juno space probe entered its orbit around the planet Jupiter, no one knew that powerful cyclones approximately the size of Australia rage across its polar regions. Jupiter’s storms, as opposed to the earthly variety, do not disperse and rarely change. In an article published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science reveal the mysteries of Jupiter’s cyclones: which forces affix these gargantuan storms to their polar locations and why the storms’ numbers and locations remain more or less constant over time.
July 19, 2021
Catch a glimpse of the Weizmann Institute’s beautiful, garden-like campus where scientists are working to solve the greatest challenges of our time.
July 12, 2021
Scientists from Weizmann, the Max Planck Institute, and elsewhere have “found that making food from air would be far more efficient than growing crops,” reports Phys.org.
June 22, 2021
Haaretz reports on Prof. Elisabetta Boaretto’s finding that early humans and Neanderthals spent more time together than previously thought.
June 21, 2021
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—June 14, 2021—The Boker Tachtit archaeological excavation site in Israel’s central Negev desert holds clues to one of the most significant events in human history: the spread of modern humans, Homo sapiens, from Africa into Eurasia, and the subsequent demise of Neanderthal populations in the region. Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Max Planck Society, led by Prof. Elisabetta Boaretto, together with Dr. Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority, returned to Boker Tachtit nearly 40 years after it was first excavated. Using advanced sampling and dating methods, they offer a new chronological framework for this important chapter in our anthropological evolution. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study suggests that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were far from strangers.
June 14, 2021
The New York Times covers recent revelations from NASA’s June probe, talking to mission scientists such as Prof. Yohai Kaspi.
June 14, 2021
Prof. Ron Milo calculated the weight of coronavirus, finding, as Live Science reports, that it’s between that of an apple and a young toddler.
June 10, 2021
Despite decades of research, we don’t know much about the brain. It is as strange as the deep sea, as complex as a computer, as mysterious as the universe – and it makes us who we are, as humans and individuals.
Understanding this most complex of organs is more important now than ever: lifespans are increasing and, thus, so are age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s; awareness of mental illness is rising, as is the need for effective treatments; rates of autism are still going up. Fortunately, technological advances over the past several years are, for the first time, allowing scientists to study the brain at a level of detail never before possible.
©2021 American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science