Israel Pecht - Biography#

Born in 1937, in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated with his parents late in 1938 to British-mandate ruled Palestine. He received his undergraduate education in Jerusalem (1962, Physical Chemistry, Hebrew University) and did his graduate studies (Physical Chemistry) at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Ph.D. 1967). He then pursued his postdoctoral research with Prof. Manfred Eigen at the MPI für Physikalische Chemie in Göttingen (1967-1970). In 1970 he joined the Department of Chemical Immunology of the Weizmann Institute where he served first as the Jacques Mimran Professor of Chemical Immunology. He was the Founding Director of the J. Cohn Center for Biomembrane Research (1988) at the Institute. Prof. Pecht was invited to serve at many institutions as visiting scientist or guest Professor, amongst these, the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (1972 and 1974), University of Konstanz (1973), Stanford University (1977-78), California Institute of Technology (1981-82).

Israel Pecht's scientific interests are in trying to understand the physicochemical principles underlying fundamental processes of life. Already during his graduate studies he pursued the role of transition metal ions, primarily copper in model systems for water oxidation to oxygen and the reverse reaction of dioxygen reduction to water. As postdoc he has already investigated by chemical relaxation the electron transfer within copper oxidases catalyzing dioxygen reduction to water. Establishing his own lab at the Weizmann institute of Science he expanded the work on electron transfer enzymes, pioneering the application of pulse radiolysis to the resolution of internal ET steps in key redox enzymes such as cytochrome-c oxidase. In parallel, his lab became a world center of biophysical studies of key molecular processes in immunology, being the first in analyzing by thermodynamic and kinetic methods antigenic epitope interactions with the very first available monoclonal antibodies. These then expanded to investigation of the recognition process by T-cell receptors of their specific antigens. Another compartment of the immune system, mast cells, was subjected to quantitative analysis of its stimulus-response coupling cascade, from IgE binding to cell-surface receptors, to defining the trigger of cell-stimulus, to the secretory response.