Prof. Israel Pecht

Prof. Emeritus Israel Pecht

Israel Pecht (Hebrew ישראל פכט) :born in Vienna, Austria on June 28 1937, is an Israeli biophysical chemist currently serving as a professor emeritus at the Weizmann institute of science.

Biography

Born in Vienna, Austria on June 28 1937. His parents succeeded emigrating with him to British Mandate ruled Palestine in late 1938.His father, Benjamin Yitschak Paecht had a textile plant in Vienna and turned to wholesale tobacco sale in Tel Aviv.Israel Pecht attended high school in Tel Aviv and after serving in the Israel IDF (1955-1958), he studied at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, where he earned his M.Sc. in Physical Chemistry (1962). He became graduate student at the Department of Isotope Research, of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Scientific Career

After receiving his Ph.D. from the Feinberg Graduate school of the Weizmann institute he then carried out his postdoctoral research with Prof. Manfred Eigen at the Max-Planck Institut für Physikalische Chemie in Göttingen, West Germany (1967-1970), being practically the first Israeli scientist in such a position after the holocaust. In early 1970, at the invitation of Prof. Michael Sela, he joined the Department of Chemical Immunology of the Weizmann Institute of Science, as a Junior Researcher. In 1977 he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and became full Professor in 1984. Other appointments at the Weizmann Institute of Science include:

1980-1992: Jacques Mimran Professor of Chemical Immunology
1985-1994: Founding Head, Josef Cohn Minerva Center for Biomembrane Research
1989-1992: Head, Department of Chemical Immunology
1993-2006: The Dr. Morton and Anne Kleiman Professor of Chemical Immunology
1998-2002: Head, Department of Immunology
2006- Professor Emeritus, Department of Immunology

Prof. Pecht has been an active member of local and international organizations, such as the Israel National Science Foundation (Chairman, 1989-1996); the Advisory Board to the Chief Scientist of the Israel Ministry of Health; the Comité de Direction, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, CNRS, Strasbourg, France, the European Federation of Immunological Societies (President, 1995-1998), and evaluation committees appointed by the German Federal Government and its science council. From 1995, he served as Vice President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics, and in 1999, was elected its President. He was elected as Secretary General of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) in 2007, serving till 2016, when he was appointed as Honorary member of the FEBS Executive committee.

Research activities

Prof. Pecht investigated the physico-chemical principles underlying the operation of the immune system at the molecular level.Specifically, he has characterised the recognition processes performed by immunoreceptors from antibodies to their membrane analogues and its coupling to activation of different biological responses. One particular line of his is in understanding the molecular processes underlying allergies. His work yielded detailed insight into the biochemical and biophysical behavior of the mast cells, which are central to the development of the above diseases.This was essential for developing novel avenues for their treatments. Professor Pecht’s research has led to the discovery of novel compounds with a remarkable capacity of blocking the secretion of allergy- causing agents by mast cells. A different line of his research continued to be aims at understanding electron transfer reaction between and within proteins.

He was a member of the Executive Editorial Board of Immunology Letters and served as its Chief Editor (1998-2004). He served as transmitting Editor for International Immunology. He was a member of the Advisory/Editorial Boards of: European Journal of Biochemistry, European Journal of Immunology, Molecular Immunology, European Biophysics Journal, Critical Reviews Biochemical and Molecular Biology, and of the International Archives of Allergy and Immunology.

Awards and Recognition

He was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO, 1977), and as an Honorary Member of the Swedish Biophysical Society (1980), the Hungarian society of Immunology(1997), the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SBMB) (2012), the Croatian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2016) and the Polish Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. His awards include the Landau Prize in Life Sciences (2003) both of the Weizmann in, the Distinguished Fairchild Scholarship of the California Institute of Technology (1981-82). He received The Schwerin Research Prize (1984) and the H. Dudley Wright Achievement Prize (1986) both at the weizman Institute. The Federal Republic of Germany awarded him the Cross of the Order of Merit in 1998. He was elected as a Member of Academia Europaea (2016), and of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2007). He received honorary doctorates from the University Medical School, Debrecen, Hungary (1998), and the National University of Athens, Greece (2013).

References

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