For the first time ever, an Israeli scientist, Prof. Ehud Gazit of Tel Aviv University, has been selected for the International Solvay Chair in Chemistry. He is the first chemist outside of the United States and Europe to be appointed to this position.
The International Solvay Institutes, founded in Belgium about a century ago, were designed to develop and support creative and groundbreaking research in physics, chemistry and related fields. The ISI organizes annual conferences on physics and chemistry, as well as international workshops.
The Solvay Chair has been won by 15 of the world’s top scientists, including three Nobel laureates in chemistry.
Gazit is a world-renowned expert in nanotechnology and biological chemistry. He has published more than 350 scientific articles and holds more than 100 patents. His main area of expertise is solid state biology, an innovative field of study that combines disciplines from physics, chemistry, synthetic and structural biology, and materials engineering.
He is associated with TAU’s Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at the Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Department of Materials Science at the Fleischman Faculty of Engineering.
Over the years, Gazit has won prestigious awards and prizes in Israel and around the world, including the Kadar Prize for research excellence, the Landau Prize in Science and Arts, and the Rapaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK, a foreign fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in India, and a member of the European Organization for Molecular Biology.
“I thank the Solvay Institute for selecting me,” Gazit said. “It’s a great honor.”
