When Prof. Leslie Leiserowitz of the Weizmann Institute was awarded the 2016 Israel Prize for ‘Chemistry and Physics’ with Prof. Meir Lahav, he was only the third South African Israeli to receive Israel’s highest civilian award. The other two recipients were Dr. Ian Froman in 1989 for his contribution to society through sport, and Hillel Deleski in 2000 for the study of literature.
At the prestigious ceremony in Jerusalem on Yom Ha’atzmaut, the internationally esteemed scientists of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Materials and Interfaces Department were honoured “for their joint work in understanding crystallization in a wide range of materials found in nature.”
“How and why do artery-blocking chunks of cholesterol form?”
“What happens at the very first stage of the transition from water to ice?”
“What can be done to prevent the formation of gallstones or the crystals in the joints that cause pain in gout?
These are all questions about one of the more important processes in nature: crystallization, and Leslie and Professor Lahav have worked separately and together over their careers to investigate this process. Their research has revealed many of nature’s rules underlying various forms of crystallization, including the phenomenon of chirality – “handedness” – in molecular and crystal structures. It was for this work they received the Israel Prize.
Born in Johannesburg in 1934, Leslie obtained a BSc. in Electrical Engineering from UCT and during an ensuing 18-month period “of work, unemployment and travel,” he became fascinated in a field of chemistry that drew him to an illuminating work – “The Crystalline State” by Brag & Bragg. “The symmetry of the crystal structures therein,” intrigued Leslie, reminding him “of the patterns my mother worked with as a dressmaker in Johannesburg.” This curiosity, coupled with a knowledge of “microwave interference”, led him to his next marker on his academic path – “The Optical Principles of the Distraction of X-rays” by R.W. James, who was Professor of Physic at UCT. With now a clear direction, the young budding scientist studied for an MSc in X-ray crystallography in the Physics Dept. at UCT.
Following his travels to London and then on to Israel “with my good friend, the late Mervyn Smith,” who he knew “from our Bellville days,” he joined in 1959, the research group of Gerhard Schmidt at the Weizmann Institute of Science as a PhD student in solid-state chemistry.
Leslie’s journey of research, took him to academic posts abroad, and in more recent years, he has focused on a childhood fascination with the study of malaria – a project, which he says, “in some ways is a continuation of my original research with Prof. Lahav on crystal growth. It was not generally appreciated that this infectious disease is intimately connected with crystallization.” Leslie reveals that growing up in Johannesburg, “I learnt from my father, who had spent long stretches of time in Central Africa, the full ravages of the disease.”
Leslie, who is married with three daughters and seven grandchildren has been a Full Professor in the Department of Structural Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute since 1983. His achievements include the Weizmann Institute’s Ernst David Bergman Prize, the Prelog Gold Medal from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the Gregori Aminoff Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’. In addition, he was also elected to Leopoldina – the German Academy of Sciences.
When the hot news of his award was announced by Education Minister Naftali Bennet, Leslie was enjoying the cold water of Clifton while holidaying in Cape Town.
If Leslie’s mother, who died young – “only in her forties” – was today looking down from her celestial perch, she would be amazed and proud that from the simple patterns of her daily dressmaking, lay the complex mysteries that would inspire her brilliant son to pursue a journey of scientific exploration culminating in the Israel Prize.
