Shimon Peres always believed in the importance of science and technology for the advancement of Israel for which he was conferred a Technion honorary doctorate in 1985, Peres was a firm and steadfast advocate of Technion. In 2003 Peres was present at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Technion Sara and Moshe Zisapel Nano-Electronics Center; participated in the signing ceremony of the Technion’s cooperation agreement with the École Polytechnique in 2013; and in 2015, honored the Technion with his presence at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT), where he said, “The establishment of a Technion campus in China is one more proof that Israeli innovation is breaking down geographic borders.”
In 2014, then-President Shimon Peres, 1994 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, participated in a panel on campus together with Technion’s three Nobel laureates: Distinguished Profs. Dan Shechtman, Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover. “How lucky that the Technion was founded 24 years before 1948, thus laying the foundations for the future state of Israel,” said Peres. “Had Israel been founded before Technion, the road would have been much harder. There is hardly an important project in the country that didn’t begin at Technion: the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering trained the people who then established the Aerospace Industries; the Dimona reactor, too, was built by Technion people. I’m proud of the Technion – the institution that produced Israel’s first Nobel Prize laureates in science.”
Later at the same occasion he related:
“David Ben Gurion, a great dreamer, once asked me to set up a football team that would win the world championship. I told him it was impossible, but to you I say that the Technion can be a world champion among all institutes of its kind. We must dare to dream, because Israel is small in area and poor in resources, so we have no choice but to be great visionaries. To be a visionary is not a tangible quality, but visionaries can create a new reality.”
