Weizmann, Chaim

(1874-1952)

   Israeli Zionist leader and statesman. He was born in Motel near Pinsk, in Belorussia. He settled in England and in 1904 became a lecturer in biological chemistry at Manchester University. In 1916 he was appointed director of the British Admirality Chemical Laboratories. His Zionist activities began when he became associated with the Democratic Fraction in 1901; the following year he and Berthold Feiwel proposed the creation of the Hebrew University. In L903 Weizmann opposed the plan for the estab-lishment of a Jewish homeland in Uganda and became a supporter of synthetic Zionism. He was the prime mover behind the Balfour Declaration. At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 Weizmann together with Menahem Mendel Ussishkin and Nahum Sokolow represented the Zionist movement, and in the same year he became president of the World Zionist Organization. He later retired to Rehovot to work at the Weizmann Institute, which he had helped to found. In 1948 he became the first president of the State of Israel.