When was Heinz Steinitz born?
33214758#1
Heinz Steinitz was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on April 26, 1909, to Walter Steinitz (1882-1963), a cardiologist and zoologist, and Marta Schindler Steinitz (1885-1926). He grew up in Breslau and was greatly inspired by his father to study science and to be an active Zionist. He studied medicine from 1927-1933 in the universities of Breslau, Freiburg and Berlin. Although he passed the Medical Board examination in 1933, and would have started work in a hospital in Berlin and in the Jewish hospital in Breslau, he was prohibited from practicing by the Nazi regime which came to power that same year. Together with his wife Ruth Aber Steinitz (1907-1995), a medical student as well, he left Germany in 1933 and immigrated to Palestine.
Heinz Steinitz
33215439#5
His three sons were born, grew up and studied in Germany before they emigrated to Palestine. He inspired them to study sciences: Ernst Steinitz (1907-1980), was an internist in the private sector; Heinz Steinitz (1909-1971) was a professor of zoology and marine biology in the Department of Zoology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Gideon Steinitz (1911-1975) was a mathematician in his academic education, became a meteorologist in Palestine and eventually was head of the Israel Meteorology Service.
Walter Steinitz
33214758#0
Heinz Steinitz (April 26, 1909 – April 28, 1971, ) was a senior Israeli marine biologist and herpetologist, Professor and Chairman of the Department of zoology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He laid the foundation for research and teaching in marine biology and oceanography in Israel. In 1968 he founded the Marine Biology Laboratory of the Hebrew University near Eilat, serving as its first director. He also served as a founding member of the Zoological Society of Israel and a co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.
Heinz Steinitz
33214758#2
Three sons were born to Heinz Steinitz and Dr. Ruth Steinitz. Each turned to sciences: Raphael Steinitz, an astrophysicist, is a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Physics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheba; Gideon Steinitz, a senior geologist, was the former Head of the Geological Survey of Israel, Jerusalem; and Benjamin Steinitz, a plant scientist retired as a senior research scientist in the fields of plant physiology and horticulture at the Institute of Plant Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, Rishon LeZion.
Heinz Steinitz
33214758#17
Doctor Walter Steinitz, father of Heinz Steinitz, published in 1919 his vision and proposal to establish a marine biology research station on the Mediterranean coast of Palestine. The Hebrew University, and scholars in Palestine and in other countries, supported the plans of the project, but attempts to raise funds for it failed. Inspired by his father's vision, Heinz Steinitz resumed the effort to carry out the concept. However, he decided in the 1950s that the station would be better situated if it were built on the coast of the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Eilat (Gulf of Aqaba). He had three reasons for this preferred location: (a) Being by that time knowledgeable about the marine life in both the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, Heinz Steinitz recognized the higher richness and the notable biodiversity of the latter, which still remained widely uninvestigated. (b) First reports about the presence of fishes of Indo-Pacific origin in the eastern Mediterranean Sea began to appear in the beginning of the twentieth century. Indo-Pacific fishes were also observed along the coast of Palestine for the first time by Walter Steinitz. The findings were indicative for intrusion of alien fishes into the eastern Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal that was constructed and opened only several decades prior to those first observations. Heinz Steinitz believed that a research base in the Golf of Eilat would be best placed to conduct investigations into the phenomenon of migration of marine biota from the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea (a northern branch of the Indian Ocean) through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea. Furthermore, a marine station in the Gulf of Eilat would facilitate analysis of the environmental and ecological changes resulting from man-made connection between the two global water bodies. (c) Polluting spills from the cities of Eilat and Aqaba into the Gulf waters, and pollutants discharged by ships and oil tankers that traffic along the Red Sea and cross the Suez Canal, constituted environmental perils. The marine research station staff in Eilat would be able to monitor impacts of anthropogenic activities on ecological processes and on the very sensitive marine ecosystems of the region.
Heinz Steinitz
33214758#14
The fish collection of the Hebrew University was begun in the 1920s by Prof. Israel Aharoni and Prof. Georg Haas, soon after the opening of the Department of Zoology. Steinitz added specimens from the very beginning of his work in the department. During the 1950s, the collection of fish specimens was carried out also by Prof. Adam Ben-Tuvia from the Sea Fishery Research Station in Haifa, a former student of Steinitz. A considerable augmentation of the collection occurred with the harvest of the expeditions to Sinai in 1956 and the Israeli South Red Sea Expeditions in the 1960s, when over 3,000 lots of fish were deposited. The taxonomic and zoogeographic identification of specimens was often conducted by correspondence between Steinitz and ichthyologists and curators of research institutes and science museums around the world. As a consequence, the collection became recognized as having major international importance, serving as a reference collection for the international community of ichthyologists.
Heinz Steinitz
33214758#16
A special facet of Steinitz's international activities was building-up contacts and collaborations with West Germany's scientists, institutions and organizations. He commenced doing so years prior to the establishment, in 1965, of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel. In 1946, working on the fish collection, he exchanged information and biological material with the German zoologist and geneticist Curt Kosswig. Prof. Kusswig emigrated in 1937 from Nazi Germany to Turkey, where he established the Department of Zoology at the Istanbul University. He returned to West Germany in 1955, was appointed head of the Zoological Institute and the Zoological Museum of the University of Hamburg, and visited Steinitz at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From the early 1960s Steinitz was invited several times to visit as a guest professor at the University of Hamburg and other German universities. He also visited and tied connections with museums of science, zoological museums and marine biology research stations in West Germany. He became acquainted with Dr. Günther Böhnecke, an oceanographer who played a central role after World War II in rehabilitating Germany's scientific relationships with countries worldwide. Dr. Böhnecke was an advisor to the German Research Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), in the field of oceanography. The personal acquaintance and mutual appreciation between Steinitz and Böhnecke led to the support by the DFG for building and operating a marine biology laboratory near Eilat.
Heinz Steinitz
3966685#1
Steinitz was born in Laurahütte (Siemianowice Śląskie), Silesia, Germany (now in Poland), the son of Sigismund Steinitz, a Jewish coal merchant, and his wife Auguste Cohen; he had two brothers. He studied at the University of Breslau and the University of Berlin, receiving his Ph.D. from Breslau in 1894. Subsequently, he took positions at Charlottenberg (now the Technical University of Berlin), Breslau, and the University of Kiel, Germany, where he died in 1928. Steinitz married Martha Steinitz and had one son.
Ernst Steinitz
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In his earliest expeditions, in 1938-1940, Steinitz explored the fauna of Lake Hula and its surrounding marshland. Immediately following the outbreak of the Suez Crisis of 1956, Steinitz organized and headed an expedition examining the marine fauna along the Red Sea coasts of the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal. In 1962 he led the first Israeli South Red Sea Expedition (ISRSE) which was based on the islands of the Dahlak Archipelago of Eritrea. The ISRSE was part of the first International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE) from 1962-1965. It was an interdisciplinary marine sciences research effort to survey the south Red Sea and to collect biological specimens and data from the region. Otto Haim Oren from the Haifa Sea Fishery Research Station and Lev Fishelson from the Tel Aviv University, both at that time doctoral students of Steinitz, assisted in organizing the project. The expedition team included a crew of researchers from universities and research institutes in Israel, as well as scientists from the Netherlands, USA and Ethiopia.
Heinz Steinitz
33214758#7
Appointed lecturer in 1946, he instructed animal histology, anatomy of livestock animals and laboratory animals. During the Arab-Israeli War (1948-1949) he served in a preventive healthcare military unit, teaching medical students recruited to army service. 
As a consequence of that war, the campus of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus became an enclave in the Jordanian kingdom, disconnected from the western part of a divided Jerusalem. The university relocated its faculties to west Jerusalem. The zoology department, excluded from the new Givat Ram campus constructed in the 1950s, resided in buildings on different sites in the western city. Steinitz was active in reorganizing the department's function under the new circumstances and took care of the zoological collections moved from Mount Scopus to west Jerusalem. His office and labs migrated over the years. At first they were in the Terra Sancta building in Rehavia, then in the St. Antonio Monastery building, across from the official residence of the President of Israel, and finally close to the Russian Compound in the center of west Jerusalem. 
In 1951 Steinitz went to the USA for two years as a research fellow at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, where he conducted research in the field of experimental embryology. By 1954 he was promoted to Assistant Professor, became Associate Professor in 1957, and was appointed in 1963 Chairman of Division A of the Department of Zoology in Jerusalem. He lectured in general zoology, vertebrates and invertebrates morphology, animal histology, experimental embryology and ecology. From the mid-1950s onwards, marine biology and marine ecology became core of his research interests. He was the first to teach marine biology, and by 1966 he headed the development of the marine biology curriculum and research programs. In 1968, being Chairman of the Department of Zoology, he was appointed Full Professor.
Heinz Steinitz