Yad Weizmann, which oversees the Chaim Weizmann Archives and Weizmann House, hosted the Institute’s annual Tu B’Shvat event, on February 2, featuring a tree-planting activity along the rim of the Weizmann House lawn.
Seventy-seven years ago, when the holiday coincided with the establishment of the Knesset, Dr. Chaim Weizmann spoke about the metaphorical seeds and saplings of the future state of Israel. Scientific research would provide an engine of growth, he said, and that “above science stands the values of justice, integrity, peace, and brotherhood which will provide the remedy for the afflictions of humanity”—words that resonate deeply today.
Alon Weingarten, Vice President of Administration, spoke at the event, which was moderated by Navit Kopelis, CEO of Yad Weizmann. Boaz Cohen, Head of the Gardening Development and Maintenance Section, led the planting, joined by dozens of Weizmann employees as well as two special-needs day care groups from Rehovot.
Prof. Avi Levy, Head of the Green Campus Initiative and a member of the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, described Dr. Weizmann’s pioneering research in fermentation, which, in effect, was a method to generate new materials, including fuels, cleanly—but that the world, driven by economic pressures, turned to the oil industry as its main source of energy. Today, he pointed out, the Institute carries Chaim Weizmann’s legacy forward with important research on sustainable energy solutions and new materials.
While Dr. Weizmann was not recognized as a world-leading scientist in his time, said Prof. Levy, “A hundred years after he published his research, it has become clear that his work is more relevant than ever. It is being rediscovered and applied in what we would call today ‘green chemistry’ and sustainable biotechnology.”
The scientific legacy of Chaim Weizmann—and the roots of the Weizmann Institute
Prof. Avi Levy’s research focuses on plant genomes, especially wheat and other crops, described the founder of the Weizmann Institute as a chemist whose work offered a major leap forward in green chemistry, also known as clean chemistry. He did so decades before the global warming crisis and the pursuit of various means of alternative energy solutions that could help reverse the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels. Below is an excerpt from his speech on Tu B’Shvat:
Chaim Weizmann trained as a classical organic chemist but he quickly realized that microorganisms could be harnessed to produce specific metabolites. This led him to develop a new fermentation process with a bacterium that he isolated, Clostridium acetobutylicum, to produce acetone, butanol, and ethanol from scratch—which he named the ABE process. This was a simple process, cheaper and environmentally cleaner than the chemical synthesis, using starch from wheat or maize to feed the bacteria. It therefore enabled scaling up production.
Dr. Weizmann filed a patent on the ABE process in 1916. Acetone was widely used for the making of various compounds, including nitroglycerine (a key ingredient in dynamite). Butanol and ethanol were used as fuels. This is one of the first examples of metabolic engineering in bacteria, making him a pioneer in biotechnology. In recent years, there have been many publications on the ABE process. In particular, about 10 years ago, a group from the University of California at Berkeley used it to produce a polymer of ABE, making a high-quality fuel. So Dr. Weizmann had a clear vision that biotechnology could be used in a cheap and clean manner to make high-value chemicals.
Did you ever wonder why our Institute is in Rehovot and not in one of the big cities of Israel? The reason, also related to Tu B’Shvat, is agriculture. Rehovot was a strong center of agricultural research in the 1920s and 30s, and part of the land where we are situated was an experimental agricultural station. Dr. Weizmann decided to establish here the Sieff Institute to provide the farming feedstock needed for the new fermentation industry he had in mind.
One of the crops he decided to develop was castor beans. It is a fast-growing plant that is resistant to our arid conditions. He hoped to use its seeds to make oil. The oil of castor is very strong and can be used for many purposes: It makes an excellent motor oil, can be used for paints, and can be used to make biodiesel. A start-up company founded by former students of mine is developing new varieties of castor grown now in Brazil for this purpose. This is considered a clean and renewable source of fuel compared to fossil fuels. Another utilization is for plastic and nylon fibers—another patent of Dr. Weizmann. In fact, my department, of Plant and Environmental Sciences (originally called Plant Genetics), was established to develop new castor varieties, which it did. Dr. Weizmann also used bacteria and enzymes to produce what we is called today “alternative proteins” from farming and food waste. In our era of foodtech and cleantech, it is hard not to be impressed by such a vision.
So what went wrong, and why have we only now rediscovered the research of Dr. Weizmann for sustainable chemistry? What went wrong is that humanity took a dramatic wrong turn and instead of further developing sustainable solutions, it moved under strong economic pressures to the emerging oil industry, developing petrochemistry to make fuel and petrol-derived compounds. Can you imagine the world without oil but instead, using renewable sources of feedstock? Think of all the curses of petrol, like global warming, and pollution and not mentioning geopolitical aspects.
Chaim Weizmann was a visionary—ahead of his time, not only in diplomacy, and not only as the driving force in the construction of world-leading scientific institutions in the Yishuv (Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel) before we had a state, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Technion, and the Weizmann Institute, but also in sustainability science. We are proud to continue his legacy.