• Israel receives worldwide praise for the speed and efficiency with which it sent 220 doctors, nurses and aid workers and a field hospital to Haiti in the wake of a devastating earthquake in January.
• Israelis rush aid and personnel to Chile after an earthquake later in 2010, and in subsequent years would rush to help victims of earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Ecuador and Nepal — as well as natural disasters including typhoons, hurricanes and forest fires across the globe.
• On September 7, Israel becomes a full member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a forum in which governments work together to seek solutions for common problems. This milestone is strategically important to Israel’s positioning as an advanced developed economy. Israel has become OECD’s No. 1 member country in terms of R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP.
• Israeli mathematician Elon Lindenstrauss is the first Israeli to be awarded the Fields Medal, and Israeli author Etgar Keret receives the Chevalier (Knight) Medallion of France’s Order of Arts and Letters.
• Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram launch OrCam Technologies to develop wearable assistive technologies for people with visual impairment. In 2018, OrCam is valued at $1 billion.
• Israeli inventions during 2010 include Danny Peleg’s Hydrospin, a small rotating wheel that turns within a water pipe in order to generate an electrical current as a perpetual source of clean energy; and David Levy’s potato that can grow in hot, dry climates.