Oren Harman is a writer and historian of science. He has written and edited books for both academic and general audiences.
Oren Harman is a writer and historian of science. He has written and edited books for both academic and general audiences.
Oren Harman was born in Jerusalem on January 25, 1973. He grew up and was educated in Jerusalem and in New York City, where he attended the Collegiate School for Boys and excelled at soccer (he was dubbed "the little Israeli magician" by New York Newsday ). He graduated from Hebrew University Secondary School in Jerusalem. Harman studied history and biology at Hebrew University, where he graduated summa cum laude. He then received M.Sc. and D.Phil. degrees with distinction from Oxford University, [1] before spending two years at Harvard University, conducting research and teaching in the Department of History of Science.
Harman was subsequently awarded the Alon Award for academic excellence, and was elected in 2003 to the Young Academy of Sciences of Israel. Between 2008-2021 he served as Chair of the Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar-Ilan University [2] and is a Senior Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, where he hosts the "Talking About Science in the 21st Century" public lecture series. His fields of expertise include the history and philosophy of modern biology, evolutionary theory, altruism, historical biography, science and mythology, and the historiography of the life sciences.
Harman has been a frequent contributor to The New Republic, [3] and Haaretz Magazine, and is the co-creator, with Yanay Ofran and Ido Bahat, of the television documentary series "Did Herzl Really Say That?", on changing cultural identities in Israel. [4] His work has been featured in Science, Nature, The New York Times, The Times, TLS, The New York Review of Books, The Economist, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Radio Lab, among others.
Harman lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Yael, and their three children.
The Man Who Invented the Chromosome (Harvard University Press, 2004) tells the story of the English scientist Cyril Dean Darlington, who tried to use biology to understand human history and culture, and whose ideas foreshowed much of the influential field of evolvability. The Price of Altruism explores the evolutionary origins of altruism, and the life of the polymath George R. Price, who wrote an equation to help solve its apparent paradox. The book won the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prize [5] in the category of Science and Technology, was long-listed for the Royal Society Winton Prize, was a New York Times Book of the Year, [6] was nominated for the Pulitzer prize and has inspired theater plays and radio shows. Evolutions: Fifteen Myths That Explain Our World(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) is an original rendering of major events in the history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the evolution of consciousness and the birth of humankind.
Harman is also the co-creator and editor, with Michael Dietrich, of a trilogy of books on the growth and development of the life sciences: Rebels (Yale, 2008), Outsiders (Chicago, 2013), and Dreamers (Chicago, 2018). He is co-editor with Dietrich and Mark Borrello of the Handbook of the Historiography of Biology. Harman's books have been translated into languages including Polish, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Turkish, and Malayalam.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened in April 1925. It is the second-oldest Israeli university, having been founded 30 years before the establishment of the State of Israel but six years after the older Technion university. The HUJI has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. Until 2023, the world's largest library for Jewish studies—the National Library of Israel—was located on its Edmond J. Safra campus in the Givat Ram neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
Bar-Ilan University is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic institution. It has 18,000 students and 1,350 faculty members.
George Robert Price was an American population geneticist. Price is often noted for his formulation of the Price equation in 1967.
Max Jammer, was an Israeli physicist and philosopher of physics. He was born in Berlin, Germany. He was Rector and Acting President at Bar-Ilan University from 1967 to 1977.
Shlomo Avineri was an Israeli political scientist. He was a professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He also served as a recurring visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest and a fellow at Munich-based academic think tank Centrum für angewandte Politikforschung, offering advice to politicians. Avineri died on 1 December 2023 at the age of 90.
Ben-Zion Dinur was an Israeli historian, educator, and politician. He held the position of professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and represented Mapai in the first Knesset, serving as Minister of Education. Dinur was one of the founders of Yad Vashem and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.
Ruth Kark is an Israeli historical geographer and professor of geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor Kark is a well-known researcher and expert in the field of the historical geography of Palestine and Israel.
Michael Peter Bruno was an Israeli economist. He was governor of the Bank of Israel and a former World Bank Chief Economist.
Yoram Reuben Hazony is an Israeli-American philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and serves as the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation. He has argued for national conservatism in his 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism and 2022's Conservatism: A Rediscovery.
Don Patinkin was an American-born Israeli monetary economist, and the President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Tom Segev is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.
Dan Bahat is an Israeli archaeologist especially known for his excavations in Jerusalem, particularly at the Western Wall tunnels.
Ido Bachelet is an Israeli-Chilean scientist.
Michael R. Dietrich is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh. His research concerns developments in twentieth century genetics, evolutionary biology, and developmental biology, with a special emphasis on scientific controversies.
Israel Story or Sipur Israeli is an Israeli radio show and podcast. Israel Story produces episodes in both English and Hebrew. The Hebrew show, which began production in 2013, is broadcast on Galei Tzahal, Israel's national Army Radio station. The English version, which began production in 2014, is distributed by Public Radio Exchange (PRX) as a bi-weekly podcast. Israel Story partnered with Tablet magazine to distribute its first six seasons of English episodes and then partnered with The Times of Israel.
Jacob M. Landau was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Haim Sompolinsky, is the William N. Skirball Professor of Neuroscience at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, and a professor of physics at the Racah Institute of Physics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He is also a visiting professor in the Center of Brain Science at Harvard University and the director of Harvard's Swartz Program in Theoretical Neuroscience. He is widely regarded as one of the leaders of theoretical neuroscience.
Raphael "Rafi" Falk was a German-born Israeli geneticist and historian of science. He was professor emeritus of genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. His early research was on the genetics of Drosophila; from 1983 he was active in researching the history and philosophy of science, with a particular focus on genetics.
Margalit Shilo is an Israeli historian. Until her retirement, she worked at the Land of Israel Studies and Archeology Department at Bar Ilan University where her area of focus was the Jewish community in pre-state Israel, and women and gender in Israel. She is the author and editor of 12 books and 80 papers.
Dan Michman is a Jewish historian. He is the head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and incumbent of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust studies.
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