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.
Dec 10, 2019...
A “river” of electrons flowing in a graphene channel. The viscosity generated by the repulsion between electrons (red balls) causes them to flow with a parabolic current density, illustrated here as a white foam wave-front
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—December 10, 2019—We often speak of electrons “flowing” through materials, but in fact, they do not normally move like a liquid. However, such “hydrodynamic” electron flow had long been predicted – and now, Weizmann Institute of Science physicists have managed, with the help of a unique technique, to image electrons flowing similarly to how water moves through a pipe. This is the first time such “liquid electron flow” has been visualized, and it has vital implications for future electronic devices.
Jan 13, 2016...
Prof. Yoseph Imry, one of this year's Wolf Prize winners (GPO)
Who will win this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine, the sciences, or the arts? No one will know, of course, until the award envelopes are opened later this year, but some of those potential winners – or at least the nominees – were feted at the Knesset Wednesday, as Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Israeli Nobel laureate Professor Dan Shechtman announced the winners of the 2016 Wolf Prizes.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-september-2015/
Sep 01, 2015...
Tiny sea sapphires’ iridescence, created by a regular array of thin, transparent crystal plates, is also the secret of their “disappearance”
Tiny ocean creatures known as sea sapphires perform a sort of magic trick as they swim: One second they appear in splendid iridescent shades of blue, purple, or green, and the next they may turn invisible (at least the blue ones turn completely transparent). How do they get their bright colors and what enables them to “disappear?” New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science has solved the mystery of these colorful, vanishing creatures, which are known scientifically as Sapphirinidae. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could inspire the development of new optical technologies.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/the-president-s-report-2004/
Sep 01, 2005...
Dear Members of the Weizmann Institute Family,
When friends of the Weizmann Institute—and of Israel—ask me for some good news from our region, I have no difficulty in responding. The irrepressible energy and boundless ingenuity of Israeli inventors and entrepreneurs are there for all to see, but to none are they more evident than to those of us immersed in science and research.
Israel is home today to about 500 communications technology companies, 200 in medical instrumentation, 100 in fabless circuit design plus a number of circuit production giants, and 50 in digital printing and imaging. It has become a veritable superpower in data security, with some major companies in the field and about 80 start-ups. There are hundreds of companies developing an impressive range of programming applications—for trading in foreign currency options, for Internet applications, and a great deal more. In my own field of plant science, the long tradition of Israeli innovation is being carried forward by a growing number of biotechnology companies devoted to advanced crop improvement and the production of plant-derived products. In drug design and development, Teva Pharmaceuticals leads as a major player in the world arena and is Israel's largest and most successful commercial company ever. All this, and more, in a country of less than 6 million people!
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/crystal-clear/
Jun 01, 2008...
In November 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was in his laboratory studying light phenomena generated by discharging an electrical current in a vacuum glass tube when, to his utter disbelief, he suddenly saw the bones of his hand outlined through his flesh.
Roentgen had discovered X-rays. Within weeks, physicians were using these magical rays to see inside the human body and less than three months later, 14-year-old Eddie McCarthy of Massachusetts became the first person to have a broken bone set with their help. The new technology quickly found its way into scientific research, exploding into experimental significance following the 1912 development of X-ray crystallography, which offered a first-time look into the atomic-scale arrangement of crystals. Having exposed crystals to X-ray beams, the father-son team of Henry and Lawrence Bragg, found that the beams diffracted off the crystal’s atoms, and could be captured on film to disclose the crystal structure.
Mar 11, 2019...
Illustration by Serge Bloch
Nobody paid much attention to Jean Vance 30 years ago, when she discovered something fundamental about the building blocks inside cells. She even doubted herself, at first.
The revelation came after a series of roadblocks. The cell biologist had just set up her laboratory at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and was working alone. She thought she had isolated a pure batch of structures called mitochondria — the power plants of cells — from rat livers. But tests revealed that her sample contained something that wasn’t supposed to be there. “I thought I’d made a big mistake,” Vance recalls.
Jan 22, 2020...
Israeli researchers discovered the unique structure and mechanism of shrimp’s eyes, which allow it to see in the dark seabed, said the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) in central Israel on Monday.
The scientists, from the WIS and Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel, said they hope their findings will lead to the creation of new optical coatings and specialized paints in ultra-thin layers.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/lego-proteins-revealed/
Aug 20, 2017...
Yeast cells producing a bacterial symmetric protein complex with eight units. When it is not mutated (left), the complex diffuses freely inside the cell, but a single mutation (right) triggers its assembly into long filaments
The proteins in our bodies are social molecules. But now and again, new ties between proteins can get you into trouble. For example, when hemoglobin – the protein complex that carries oxygen in our blood – undergoes just one mutation, the complexes stick to one another, stacking like Lego blocks to form long, stiff filaments. These filaments, in turn, elongate the red blood cells found in sickle-cell disease. For over 50 years, this has been the only known textbook example in which a mutation causes these filaments to form. According to Dr. Emmanuel Levy and his group in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Structural Biology Department, Lego-like assemblies should have formed relatively frequently during evolution, and so they asked: How easy is it to get proteins to stack into filaments? Their answer, which was recently published in Nature, may have implications for both biological research and nanoscience.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-november-2013/
Nov 25, 2013... Chromosomes — the 46 tightly wrapped packages of genetic material in our cells — are iconically depicted as X-shaped formations. However, those neat X’s only appear when a cell is about to divide and the entire contents of its genome duplicated. Until now, researchers have not been able to get a good picture of the way that our DNA — some two meters of strands, all told — is neatly bundled into the nucleus while enabling day-to-day (non-dividing) gene activity. A combination of new techniques for sequencing DNA in individual chromosomes and analyzing data from thousands of measurements has given us a new picture of the three-dimensional (3D) structures of chromosomes. This method, reported recently in Nature, is the result of an international collaboration that promises to help researchers understand the basic processes by which gene expression is regulated and genome stability is maintained.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/thin-films-on-a-scale/
Jun 01, 2008...
Time equals money. But so does weight—when it comes to the films used in computers and optical telecommunications. Shaving off pounds from these devices could mean huge benefits for microelectronics as well as for satellites or spacecraft, where launching costs around $50,000 per kilogram (2.2 pounds).
A new recruit to the Institute, Dr. Milko van der Boom of the Department of Organic Chemistry, is working to create thin films with such desirable qualities as low weight and long-term thermostability. He is targeting an “all-organic” product, which he hopes will replace today’s inorganic materials. The rationale is simple. Organic films would be much easier to modify, offering far better, cheaper devices that could even be introduced into home appliances, revolutionizing the electronics industry.
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