December 2, 2007 · 1 Comment
Seymour Benzer, 86, a biologist whose research with fruit flies helped create the basis for modern neuroscience, died Nov. 30, 2007.
Benzer, the child of Jewish immigrants to Brooklyn from a Polish shtetl, was “one of the great scientists of our era,” Caltech Biology Department Chairman Elliot Meyerowitz said in a statement. “He was an amazing person, a truly original scientific thinker, and an adventurous character both in and out of his scientific work.”
He was described as brash and eccentric, “a free spirit with a taste for crashing Hollywood funerals and eating strange food (filet of snake, crocodile tail),” in a 2000 book profiling his work, “Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior,” by Jonathan Weiner. (more…)
Categories: Americans · Scientists
Tagged: biology, caltech, crick, drosophila, fruit fly, Jewish, nobel, obituary, scientist, watson
Moish Ellis, 86, Brooklyn, N.Y., Nov. 17, 2007. He was involved in Sephardic Jewish community, member of board of Sephardic Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, President of Friendship, Truth & Benevolent Society of Kastoryalis, gabai of its synagogue, and leader of Broome and Allen Boys Association.
Rabbi Yonah H. Geller, 87, Portland, Oregon, Nov. 15, 2007. He was a seventh-generation rabbir and leader of Congregation Shaarei Torah in Portland for more than 40 years.
“He may have been the most beloved person in the Portland Jewish community,” said Charlie Schiffman, executive vice president of the Portland Jewish Federation, told the Oregonian newspaper. He was was born Aug. 15, 1920, in Houston and raised in Galveston, Texas. (more…)
Categories: Americans · Businesspeople · Lawyers · Rabbis · Scientists
Tagged: auto workers, genetics, Jewish, nazis, reuther, scientist, sephardic
