Eshel Ben Jacob

Eshel BenJacob , was a theoretical and experimental physicist at Tel Aviv University, holder of the MaguyGlass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems, and Fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at Rice University. During the 1980s he became an international leader in the theory of selforganization and pattern formation in open systems, and later extended this work to adaptive complex systems and biocomplexity. His specialization in selforganization of complex systems yielded the breakthrough of solving the longstanding snowflake problem. In the late 1980s, he turned to study of bacterial selforganization, believing that bacteria hold the key to understanding the larger biological systems. He developed new pattern forming bacteria species, became a pioneer in the study of bacterial intelligence and social behaviors of bacteria, and was an influential figure in establishing the now rapidly evolving Physics of Living Systems disciplines. He was an adviser to the Microbes

Eshel BenJacob was born on April 13, 1952 in Haifa Israel into a family of pioneers that immigrated to Israel in the 1930s. His mother, Miriam BenYaakov, was born in Israel and his father, Yaakov Breslav, came to Israel with his family at the age of 5. He grew up in Even Yehuda, a village founded in 1932 by a handful of families including his maternal grandparents. BenJacob began conducting research as a teenager, first at home and for several months towards the end of high school, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. After graduating from high school, he matriculated to study physics and mathematics at Tel Aviv University and was drafted to the Israeli Navy two years later. He completed his B.Sc., M.Sc. and most of his PhD studies during the service first in the Navy Weather Forecast unit and later in the Navy Intelligence. The Navy granted him a special Personal Citation for demonstrating exceptional creative thinking and intellectual courage, thus enabling successful an

Source: Wikipedia