Saul Adler FRS
Born	( 1895-05-17 ) 17 May 1895 [ citation needed ]
Died	25 January 1966 (1966-01-25) (aged 70) [2]
Alma mater	Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine University of Leeds
Awards	Fellow of the Royal Society [1]
Scientific career
Fields	Parasitology

Saul Adler OBE FRS ( Hebrew : ???? ???? ; May 17, 1895 ? January 25, 1966) was an Israeli expert on parasitology . ^[3]

Early life [ edit ]

Adler was born in 1895 in Kerelits ( Karelichy ), then in the Russian Empire , now in Belarus . In 1900, he and his family moved to England and they settled in Leeds . He studied at University of Leeds and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine .

One of his brothers was Solomon Adler , the economist.

Career [ edit ]

From 1917 until 1920, Adler served in the Royal Army Medical Corps , attaining the rank of captain, serving in the Middle East, where he developed his first taste into research into tropical medicine , which he commenced studying after his military service, initially in Liverpool. ^[4] In 1921, Adler went to Sierra Leone to conduct research into Malaria.

In 1924, Chaim Weizmann offered him a job in Jerusalem to develop the new Institute of Microbiology. Later that year, he emigrated to Mandate Palestine and started working in Hadassah Hospital , becoming director of the department of parasitology in 1927. In 1924, he became Assistant Professor of the Department of Parasitology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , serving as Professor from 1928 to 1955.

In 1930, in conjunction with Israel Aharoni , Adler had three Syrian hamsters brought back from Syria and successfully bred them as laboratory animals. This led to the domestication of the Syrian hamster .

In the 1940s he was a leader in developing a leishmaniasis vaccine using live parasites, a practice widespread in Israel and Russia until the 1980s, when large-scale clinical trials showed that the practice led to long-term skin lesions, exacerbation of psoriasis, and immunosuppression in some people. ^{[5] [6]}

Education [ edit ]

• University of Leeds, MB, ChB, Leeds, 1917;
• Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, DTM, Liverpool, 1920;
• MRCP 1937;
• FRCP 1958.

Honours [ edit ]

• In 1933, Chalmers Medal of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (London).
• In 1944, elected Chairman of Free Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem .
• In 1947, received Order of the British Empire (OBE)
• In 1957, awarded the Israel Prize , for medicine. ^[7]
• In 1957, elected Fellow of the Royal Society (London). He was the first Israeli citizen to be elected.
• In 1965, awarded Honorary doctorate from the University of Leeds .
• In 1966, received the Solomon Bublick Award of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ^[8]
• Awarded the Order of the Phoenix , ( Greece ).
• He also received the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation, for his translation of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin .

Achievements [ edit ]

• He helped find the cure for malaria.
• A street in Jerusalem is named after him.
• A room in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was built in his honour.
• His portrait appeared on a stamp in Israel in 1995. ^[4]
• He proposed that Charles Darwin's 'mystery illness' was Chagas Disease (American trypanosomiasis). ^[9] Although this diagnosis has now been disproved, this proposal did much to excite interest in Darwin's chronic ill health.

Death [ edit ]

Saul Adler died in Jerusalem on 25 January 1966. ^{[ citation needed ]} His funeral was attended by the President of Israel.

Published works [ edit ]

• In 1925, he published Sand Flies to Man , a book on the Transmission of Leishmaniasis.
• In 1960, he translated Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species into Hebrew.

References [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

• Eva Telkes: Dictionnaire biographique de la premiere generation de professeurs de l’Universite hebraique de Jerusalem / Biographical Dictionary of the First Generation of Professors at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Bulletin du Centre de recherche francais de Jerusalem 2.1998 (Sample entry: "Shaul" Adler).