History is full of Jewish inventors, some of whom are responsible for many of the most important inventions of our time. This is the start of a collaborative project of Jewish Inventors. It has so far been based on the data from Encyclopaedia Britannica (2007), and The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement, both of which state the list of 321 great inventions goes back to 13,000 B.C. Many are so old that no individual inventor can be identified (such as beer 6000 B.C, wine 4000 B.C, or the boomerang).
This number of Jewish involvement in inventions is roughly one hundred times what one would expect.
Ref: The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement - Steven L. Pease
Some of the inventors have been honored by Encyclopaedia Britannica. Many of them have shaped world history and have made a difference to our daily lives.
To edit the project or to add inventors you will first need to JOIN THE PROJECT.
Please contact Pam Karp with any queries or start a project discussion
A
- Robert Adler - Television Remote Control (1950)
- Ruth Arnon - Israel biochemist and co-developer of the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone
- Selig Percy Amoils - South African Opthalmologist and biomedical engineer
- Zhores Alferov - the heterotransistor. Winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Hermann Aron- German engineer- electric meter.
- Chaim Aronson-Lithuanian inventor and memoirist.
- Hertha Marks Ayrton- English mathematician and engineer- first woman to win Hughes Medal for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water.
B
- Donát Bánki - carburetor (1893)
- László Bíró - Ballpoint Pen (1938)
- Emile Berliner – gramophone
- Samuel E Blum - LASIK eye surgery
- Ralph H. Baer – father of the Video Games
- Bernhard Baron – cigarette making machine
- Felix Berezin
- Eli Biham- differential cryptoanalysis.
- Simcha Blass – new water drip system
- Charles K. Bliss- pictorial symbolic language
- Baruch Samuel Blumberg - American doctor and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek)
- Dan Boneh - applied cryptography and computer security
C
- Rabbi Dr. Michael Cahn - Metzitza tube
- Stanley N. Cohen - Genetic Engineering (1973)
- Claude Cohen-Tannoudji - research in methods of laser cooling and trapping atoms
- Fred Cohen - inventor of computer virus defense techniques
- Stanley Norman Cohen - National Medal of Science in 1988.
- Frank Benjamin Colten- chemist- synthesized norethynodrel.
D
- Carl Djerassi - chemist, novelist, and playwright best known for his contribution to the development of the first oral contraceptive pill (OCP). He is considered "The father of The Pill".
E
- Albert Einstein, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1921 - theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, effecting a revolution in physics.
- Gertrude Elion - anti-leukaemia, gout, meningitis and herpes drugs
- Paul Ehrlich, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1908 - hematologist & immunologist; noted for curing syphilis and for his research in autoimmunity, chemotherapy & immunotherapy.
- Arthur Eichengrun
- Paul Eisler
F
- Lee Felsenstein
- Aron Fish - businessman
- Max Fleischer
- Joseph Friedman
- Julius Fromm
- Alexander Frumkin
G
- Dennis Gabor - Holography (1948)- Nobel Prize in Physics
- Uziel Gal
- Yisrael Galil
- Samuel Genensky
- Joseph Gerber
- Gersonides
- David Gestetner
- Charles Ginsberg - Videotape (early 1950's)
- Donald A. Glaser- Nobel Prize in Physics in 1960 for the invention of the Bubble Chamber.
- Leopold Godowsky, Jr.- color photography.
- Emanuel Goldberg
- Ken Goldberg
- Sylvan Goldman - shopping cart in 1937. Awarded a patent on April 9, 1940
- Peter Carl Goldmark - Long Playing Record (1948)
- Lewis Gompertz
- Bernard Marshall Gordon
- Gordon Gould - Laser (1958)
- Dahlia Gredinger
- Mikhail Gurevich aircraft designer
H
- Fritz Haber, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1918 (1868 - 1934) invented the industrial synthesis of ammonia, important for fertilizers and explosives. He has been described as the "father of chemical warfare".
- Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine, CIE (Мордехай-Вольф Хавкин) (1860 - 1930), Lausanne, Switzerland) Recognized as the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. Was named "a saviour of humanity".
- Ruth Handler
- David Harel
I
J
- Mary the Jewess (anywhere bet. I - III CE) She is attributed with the invention of several chemical apparatus and is considered to be the first non fictitious alchemist in the Western world.
K
- Albert Kahn - architect
- Philippe Kahn
- Victor Kaplan
- Theodore von Karman
- Ronald A Katz
- Charles Kelman
- Aaron Klug (b. 1926) Nobel Prize in 1982 for the development of crystallographic electron microscopy.
- Hedwig Kohn
- Rudolph Kompfner
- Arthus Korn (1870 - 1945) Physicist, mathematician and inventor. He was involved in the development of the fax machine, specifically the transmission of photographs or telephotography.
- Raymond Kurzweil- Reading System for the blind.
L
- Hedy Lamarr - film actress, co-invented early form of spread spectrum communications technology, a key to modern wireless communication.
- Maurice Levy - Lipstick (1915)
- Edwin Herbert Land - Instant Photography (1947)
- Jason Lanier - Virtual Reality (1989)
- Lev Landau, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1962 - theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics e.g. density matrix method in quantum mechanics, the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of second order phase transitions, the theory of superconductivity, the Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and the two-component theory of neutrinos.
- Bonet de Lattes
- Esther Lederberg
- Leon M Lederman
- Abraham Lempel
- David Levy - inventor
- Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
- Gabriel Lippmann
- Lenny Lipton
- Sol Leshinsky
- Otto Loewi
M
- Theodore Maiman - co-inventor of the Laser
- Leopold Mannes- color photography
- Louis Marx
- Zeppo Marx
- Melanie Mayron
- Stanley Mazor
- Mordecai Meirowitz
- Erich Mendelsohn
- Viktor Meyer
- Albert Abraham Michelson
- Morris Michtom
- Mikhail Mil
- Hinda Miller
- Irving Millman- vaccine against viral hepatitis
- Cesar Milstein
- Michel Mirowski
- Henri Moissan- French chemist who won a Nobel Prize in 1906 for the invention of the electric furnace that is named after him.
- Georges Montefiore-Levi
- Dov Moran
- Morton Mower- defibrillator
N
O
- J. Robert Oppenheimer - a theoretical physicist. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb".
- Stanford Ovshinsky - a prolific American inventor and scientist who had been granted well over 400 patents over fifty years, mostly in the areas of energy and information.
P Q
- Gregory Pincus - contraceptives (early 1950's)
R
- Isidor Isaac Rabi- 1944 Nobel Prize for discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance.
- Michael Rabin
- Jacob Rabinow- letter-sorting machine, optical character recognition, magnetic disk memory.
- William Rankine
- Robert H.Rines- microwave scanning system, high-res radar and sonar
- Francois de Rivaz
- Harold A. Rosen- synchronous communications satellite
- Samuel Ruben
- Benjamin A. Rubin- vaccination needle used for smallpox
- Reinhold Rudenberg
S
- Levi Strauss (1829 – 1902) founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans, Levi Strauss & Co., in 1853 in San Francisco, California.
- Fran's Sacher - Austrian born confectioner of the world famous chocolate cake "Sachertorte"
- William Salcer - designed tanks and armoured cars, jet engines for Israeli Air Force. Held 12 patents.
- Jonas Salk
- David Stern-Salomons
- Arthur L Schawlow- laser, Nobel Prize 1981
- Morris Schwartz
- David Schwartz - aviation inventor
- Adi Shamir
- Isaac Shoenberg
- Hayyim Slonimski
- Sass Somekh
- Abraham Staffel
- Lina Stern - best known for pioneering work on blood-brain barrier, hemato-encephalic barrier 1921.
- Leo H. Sternbach- Valium
- Leó Szilárd - chain reaction (1933)
- Joseph Szydlowski
T
- Edward Teller et al - Thermonuclear Bomb (1952)
- Alexander Tetelbaum
- Bruno Touschek
- Joseph Tykociner
U V
W
- Selman Waksman - Streptomycin
- Gil Weinberg
- Chaim Weizmann, First President of Israel - He was also a chemist who developed the ABE-process, which produces acetone through bacterial fermentation, one of the early modern biotechnological processes.
- Richard Willstätter, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1915 - organic chemist whose determined of the structure of chlorophyll and other plant pigments, and co-invented paper chromatography.
- Ricardo Wolf - invented the process of recovering iron from smelting process residue. He established the Wolf Foundation financing The Wolf Prize awarded in six fields: Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics, and an Art.
X Y Z
- Rosalyn Sussman Yalow - radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique
- Dr. Hiram S. Yellen - co-inventor with A. Goldstein of the Gumco Clamp, used in circumcision.
- Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof - the creator of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.
- Abraham Zacuto - astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and historian who served as Royal Astronomer in the 15th century to King John II of Portugal. The crater Zagut on the Moon is named after him.
- Moshe Zakai - the study of the theory of stochastic processes and its application to information and control problems; namely, problems of noise in communication radar and control systems.
- Zeev Zalevsky - best known for his work on Super Resolution.
- Alexander Zalmanov - a method of capillaries restoration with special Turpentine bath
- Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich - played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons
- Abraham Zelmanov - He first constructed, in 1944, the complete mathematical method to calculate physical observable quantities in the General Theory of Relativity (the theory of chronometric invariants). Applying the mathematical apparatus, in the 1940s, he established the basics of the theory of inhomogeneous anisotropic universe, where he determined specific kinds of all cosmological models — scenarios of evolution — which could be theoretically conceivable for a truly inhomogeneous and anisotropic Universe in the framework of Einstein's theory.
- Jacob Ziv - Israeli computer scientist who, along with Abraham Lempel, developed the LZ family of lossless data compression algorithms
- Paul Maurice Zoll - Defibrillator/Cardiac Pacemaker (1952)