The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (הטכניון - מכון טכנולוגי לישראל) is a university in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1924, it is the oldest university in Israel. While the Technion focuses on science and engineering, architecture and medicine are also taught.

The Technion offers both undergraduate and graduate studies in a wide range of fields, including:

• Civil and environmental engineering
• Mechanical engineering
• Electrical engineering
• Chemical engineering
• Food engineering and biotechnology
• Aeronautical and space engineering
• Industrial engineering and Management
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Architecture
• Medicine
• Computer science
• Materials engineering

Early history

The Technion was conceived in the early 1900s by the German-Jewish fund Ezrah , as a school of engineering and sciences, and the only higher learning institution, in then Ottoman Palestine. The cornerstone was laid in 1912, but studies began only 12 years later, following an intense debate over the language of instruction. Ezrah deemed the then developing Modern Hebrew inappropriate for scientific instruction, and demanded that German be used instead. However, in the aftermath of World War I and the decline of Germany's influence as a European superpower, Hebrew was adopted.

The Technion was opened in 1924, although the official opening ceremony took place in 1925.

The first class amounted to 16 students, majoring in civil engineering and architecture.

During the 1930s, the Technion absorbed many Jewish scientists fleeing Nazi Germany and its neighboring countries.

Until the opening of the school of engineering in the Ben Gurion University in the early 1970s, the Technion was the only institution in the country offering engineering degrees.

Famous graduates

Zohar Zisapel - BSEE 1970, founder of the RAD corporations.

Distinguished faculty

• Electrical Engineering Professor Emeritus Yaacov Ziv - developer of the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm
• Professor Avram Hershko and Professor Aaron Ciechanover, recipients of the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry, researched a process responsible for the dissolution of cell proteins.
• Professor Nathan Rosen (March 22, 1909 - December 18, 1995), a physicist, was co-author (with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky) of a famous 1935 Physical paper about the EPR paradox in quantum mechanics

Miscellaneous facts

• The Technion is often compared to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and has contributed to the large number of successful Israeli technical experts and businesses.

• A group of Technion graduates have created PHP, the technology that powers over half the Apache-based web servers in use worldwide, including the one serving the Wikipedia web site. They went on to start Zend Technologies, a leading Web infrastructure software company based in Israel.

• Beside academic studies and research, the Technion offers many after school and summer enrichment courses for interested youth. These courses range from introductory electronics and computer programming to aerospace, architecture, biology, chemistry and physics.

Related articles

• List of universities in Israel

External links

• Technion website