Israel Jacob Kligler (; 24 April 1889 – 23 September 1944) was a microbiologist, Zionist and humanist. Kligler was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, educated in the United States and spent most of his career in Mandatory Palestine, but died before the creation of the State of Israel.
Kliger was one of the first four professors of the Hebrew University and the founder of Department of Hygiene and Bacteriology of the university, which he headed until his death in 1944. As one of the pioneers of modern medical research in Mandatory Palestine, his interests lay in a wide range of disciplines, including Parasitology, Virology, Nutrition, Epidemiology and Public Health.
Kliger developed the Kligler Iron Agar medium for the isolation and identification of intestinal bacteria, which is still in use today.
Kligler's was a key contributor to the eradication of malaria in Mandatory Palestine, a mission completed after his death.Anton Alexander, "The key to successful malaria eradication in Palestine/Israel 90 years ago", MalariaWorld, 1 June 2012
Biography Israel Jacob Kligler was born in the town of Kopychyntsi, then in Galicia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and today in western Ukraine. He was the son of Aaron Kligler and Fruma (née Fajgel Frima Silberman). His mother died before Israel's eighth birthday, and his father subsequently remarried Sara. In 1900, his father immigrated to the US with his two older daughters, followed in September 1901 by his wife Sara and the other children, including Israel Jacob.
Kligler attended New York City public schools and earned his Bachelor of Science degree with distinction from the City College of New York in 1911. He continued his studies in Bacteriology, Pathology and Biochemistry at Columbia University: M.A (1914), Ph.D. (1915). The focus of his Ph.D. thesis was oral bacteria with special attention to dental caries.
In parallel to his studies Kligler started working as an assistant in the Department of Public Health at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (1911–1915). He left New York in 1916 and worked for a few months as a Fellow in the Department of Bacteriology of Northwestern University School of Medicine, Chicago. In August 1916, he returned to New York where he joined The Rockefeller Institute for medical research until 1920. At Rockefeller, Kligler conducted research commissioned by the Board of Directors on soil contamination, rural sanitation and intestinal bacteria. In 1918, he was drafted into the US Army and served as an instructor of bacteriology in the military station located at the Rockefeller Institute. Kligler became a member of the Yellow Fever Commission, and at the end of World War I was sent by the Rockefeller Institute to Mexico and Peru (1919/1920) where he served as the deputy of the head of the delegation, the bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi.
Soon after returning from South America, Kligler left the Rockefeller Institute and the US for Palestine, arriving in Eretz Israel in early 1921 as part of the Third Aliyah. However, he retained working contacts with the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1926, before joining the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he took part in a yellow fever mission organized by the Rockefeller Foundation to West Africa.
Aliyah to Palestine In his youth, Kligler had joined the Zionist movement in the USA. Many years later, he wrote after the death of US Supreme Court Justice Louis D Brandeis:
"The Jewish youth in 1910 considered Brandeis as a hero, someone whom we admired and worked for. When we had learned that he had accepted to head the Zionist Federation in the United States, we, the Zionist pupils, were extremely enthusiastic. The fact that a man who symbolised the finer side of life in the USA was eager to share his destiny with his people; it was like a dream that became a reality."
Towards the end of World War I, Henrietta Szold and the Hadassah organization established the "American Zionist Medical Unit" (AZMU). Kligler, who had dreamt for a long time of making 'Aliyah', wanted to be in the first professional medical health group that arrived in Palestine in July 1918, to help the Jews after the misery experienced during the war. Szold and Simon Flexner, the first director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (1901–1935), convinced Kligler to stay at the Rockefeller Institute to gain experience and training for the tasks that awaited him in Eretz Israel. Based on his personal correspondence, after returning from South America Kligler wrote to Szold on 20 July 1920: "I believe I am ready now." At the end of October 1920, a party was held at the Rockefeller Institute, to which the heads, managers and researchers came to say goodbye to a highly promising young researcher, who was about to leave for a remote country where scientific work had hardly taken place. In January 1921, Kligler arrived in the Holy Land, and began working as a manager of the laboratories of the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, located then in Prophets Street.
In Jerusalem Kligler met his wife Helen (Ahuva) Friedman, who was born in Kisvarda, Hungary on 1 November 1890. Helen studied for three years at the Lebanon Hospital, New York and became a registered nurse in 1914. During World War I, Helen volunteered for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), and after the war she volunteered for the AZMU and arrived at the Hadassah Hospital in 1919. Israel Kligler and Helen were married in The Bronx, New York on 11 November 1922, and spent their honeymoon on the way back to Palestine on the deck of the biggest ship of that time, RMS Majestic, leaving New York 16 December 1922. The new family moved to Haifa where Israel Kligler directed the Malaria Research Unit, which was established by the "Joint Distribution Committee" in September 1922 and was attached to the Health Department of Palestine. Helen became a supervisor on behalf of the Hadassah organization for the prenatal care of the women of Haifa. Later in November 1931 Helen became a member of the Social Work Council in Palestine together with Szold, Dr Helena Kagan, Rachel Katznelson-Shazar and others.
In 1925, Kligler was invited by Dr Judah Leon Magnes of the Hebrew University, which had just opened, to join the university. Kligler agreed, and on 1 April 1926 began work at the university. He established the Department of Hygiene and Bacteriology, which he directed until his death from a heart attack in Netanya, Mandatory Palestine on 23 September 1944. He was buried in the cemetery on Mount of Olives, Jerusalem. Helen died in New York January 1979. Their only child David was born 28 March 1926. David Aaron Kligler MD, MPH was devoted to the Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and was involved with the development of the Speech and Hearing Program in New York. David died on 30 December 1979, and he is buried on the Mount of Olives close to the common grave presumed to contain his father's remains.
Scientific and medical career Kligler began publishing research papers at the age of 24, immediately after his graduation. His studies at that time dealt with the classification of bacteria and their biochemical properties. He used his knowledge of their growth needs in order to develop a new medium – 'Kligler Iron Agar', for which he gained an international reputation. His scientific research philosophy was that basic research must also be applied, useful and relevant and that scientific research must not be conducted for its own sake but to make a contribution towards a better life. Before his Aliyah to Palestine, he published 43 articles on intestinal bacteria, diphtheria, streptococci, leptospira and yellow fever. Some of them, such as those relating to environmental bacterial and oral flora, were pioneering works.
Kligler arrived in Palestine in 1921. After working for a year as the director of the Hadassah Bacteriological Laboratory in Jerusalem, Kligler moved to Haifa and began his research into malaria, then the most destructive disease in Palestine. His anti-malaria work is considered both nationally and internationally as his most important scientific work that resulted in a malaria-free Israel several years after his death.
From 1922 to 1925, Kligler published epidemiological studies on various infectious disease, working with the renowned ophthalmologist Avraham Albert Ticho on Trachoma. He researched Helminthic incidence in Jerusalem, Oriental Sore (leishmaniasis) and the characterization of Trypanosoma and Leishmania parasites grown on media.
In the spheres of microbiology, epidemiology and public health, he emphasized applied research, striving for continued improvement of the quality of life in the country. During his 24 years in Eretz Israel, Kligler published many articles on Microbiology (62 works), Parasitology (84) Virology (41) and Nutrition (6). Kligler wrote for newspapers in Mandatory Palestine and abroad, lectured to audiences worldwide and regularly appeared on radio programs of Kol Yerushalayim (The Voice of Jerusalem), the new radio station in Palestine in the late 1930s.
Many researchers who worked with Kligler in his department became distinguished professors of science in institutions in the country and abroad. Students and colleagues included: Prof. Gideon Mer (1894–1961) – a malariologist; Prof. Aryeh Leo Olitzky (1898–1983)
- a bacteriologist at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School; Prof. Abraham Komarov (1907–1960) who became Director of the Government Veterinary Institute, Haifa and produced one of the most successful Foot-and-mouth disease vaccines; Prof. Meir Yoeli (1912–1975)
– a biologist who studied rodent malaria at the New York University Medical School, and also wrote extensively on history of science including articles on malaria; Prof. Manfred Aschner (1901–1989) – a microbiologist and entomologist and was awarded the Israel Prize in 1956; Prof. Yechiel Karl Guggenheim (1906–2002) – a nutritionist
and Prof. Hans Bernkopf (1910–1966) – a virologist.
In 1922 Kligler taught the first course in hygiene at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. The course was in Hebrew. Four of the five students in this first course joined him at the Anti-Malaria Research Institute that opened in September 1922 in Haifa, and worked as anti-malaria inspectors.
In the early 1930s, Hebrew University began to offer courses in the natural sciences. During Kligler's tenure, more than forty students completed their studies in a master's degree and doctorate in natural sciences in the Department of Microbiology. Among his Ph.D. students were Benjamin Elazari Volcani (1915–1999) who was among the first to be awarded a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University and became a pioneer in the study of silicon compounds; Nathan Grossowicz (1914–2904) who became a professor in the Department of Microbiology of the university and worked on Legionnaires' disease; Deborah Kaplan – an immunologist at The Chicago Medical School;
Zvi Saliternik (1897–1993) who was awarded the Israel Prize in 1962 for his contribution to the control of malaria in the country;
Prof. Shlomo Hestrin (1914–1962) who won the Israel Prize for Exact Science in 1957; Hannah Farkas – a bacteriologist who was married to Ladislaus Farkas; Emanuel Eylan (Oleinik) – a bacteriologist and David Nachtigal – a cellular immunologist at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot.
Among his graduate students were Natan Goldblum (1920–2001), a virologist who worked on polio research and other viral pathogenesis and was awarded the Israel Prize in 1988, and Aviva Zuckerman – a malaria researcher.
Nathan Grossowicz described Kligler as