Distinguished Professor Yitzhak Apeloig, 1944–2026

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan paid tribute to him, saying: “Distinguished Professor Apeloig led the Technion with quiet confidence and steadfast leadership, guiding it to new heights in academic research and in the Technion’s impact on the State of Israel and beyond. Despite national and global crises, his years in office were marked by exceptional academic development, the establishment of new research centers, faculty recruitment, and the advancement of international collaborations.”

Prof. Apeloig was ahead of his time and among the pioneers in the use of computational tools based on quantum theory to predict the properties of molecules, as well as a pioneer in the chemistry of organosilicon compounds. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Academia Europaea. He received an honorary decoration from the president of Germany and an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin. His many honors included the Humboldt Prize, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Award, the Kipping Award of the American Chemical Society, the Schrödinger Medal, and the Gold Medal of the Israel Chemical Society. In 2018, he was awarded the Distinguished Citizen of Haifa Award by the city of Haifa.

Prof. Apeloig was born in 1944 in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, where his parents had fled from Poland following the Nazi invasion. He immigrated to Israel at the age of three, grew up in Ramat Gan, and served in the Nahal Paratroopers Brigade. During the Yom Kippur War, he fought on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. During six months of reserve duty in Sinai, he wrote his doctoral dissertation, and upon completing his military service, he left for postdoctoral studies at Princeton University. Prof. Apeloig joined the Technion faculty in 1976, was promoted to professor in 1983, and in 1995 was appointed dean of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry. He edited numerous books, served on the editorial boards of scientific journals and international committees, and published hundreds of articles.

Prof. Apeloig assumed the presidency of the Technion just weeks after the September 11 attacks in New York, in the midst of a global economic crisis and before a series of dramatic events that shaped his tenure: the Second Intifada, Operation Defensive Shield, a severe economic crisis in Israel, student and faculty strikes, and the Second Lebanon War. As president, he expanded interdisciplinary research, increased investment in research and infrastructure, doubled the scope of funded research and scholarship support, promoted the integration of new populations into the Technion, including ultra-Orthodox Jews and Ethiopian Israelis, strengthened ties with high-tech industries, and advanced dialogue between science and technology and the humanities and social sciences. During his tenure, the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute and the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering were established.

In 2004, he became the first president of an Israeli university to travel to Stockholm with Distinguished Professor Avram Hershko and Distinguished Professor Aaron Ciechanover to celebrate their Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the first Nobel Prize awarded to Israeli scientists. For him, this achievement represented not only the excellence of the Technion, but also the importance of strengthening the connection between medicine and engineering, and the understanding that future discoveries in the life sciences would rely on the integration of these fields.

In 2009, on the occasion of his 65th birthday, a special issue of the European journal Chemistry was dedicated to Prof. Apeloig. The issue, which included contributions from two Nobel laureates, honored him for his immense contributions to chemistry and for being a “mensch.”

The Technion was Yitzhak’s home and family, and he will be deeply missed. We share in the profound grief of the Apeloig family.

May his memory be a blessing.

Photo credit: Shlomo Shoham, Technion Spokesperson’s Office