Moshe Rudolf Bloch

Born in 1902 in the city of Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, Bohemia, then in Austria-Hungary. He received a PhD from the University of Bern. In 1926, he became head of the department of Metallography X-ray Spectrography at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe in Germany. His activities included work on crystal nucleation and on refrigeration technology, and experiments on the prevention of super cooling of water.

In Israel, Bloch was responsible for researching and developing solar energy processes and products sourced from the Dead Sea, and became head of the Negev Desert Research Institute. He became a very prominent man in Israeli solar energy.

At the age of 24, after receiving his PhD from the University of Bern on the topic "Absorption Range of Compounds of Rare Soil Types," Bloch joined the Karlsruhe High School and worked there from 1929 to 1933. Initially, he served as an assistant and very quickly advanced to the position of Head of the Department of Metallurgy and X-ray Spectography. During his time in Karlsruhe, he worked on crystallizing the silver iodide and forming the crystal nucleus (also began his work on the first attempts at "preventing water overcooling"). The rise of the Nazi regime interrupted his work and he left Germany for the Netherlands and England, where he directed his research into the field of refrigeration technology. As a consultant to European companies in building a new type of cooling plant Bloch's 1936 study of a process of dyeing to improve evaporation brought him together with the forgotten pioneering founder of the Dead Sea Works, a mining engineer. Novomyski. In 1936, Novomyski invited Bloch to serve as chief investigator of the company. In this capacity, Bloch continued to provide technical advice to Palestine's potash company - and then Israel - until his retirement in 1973. Periclas, cooking salt and other byproducts are - "unthinkable without Bloch's scientific studies and technological inventions." In the 1960s, Bloch directed his imagination and ingenuity to other issues such as the effect of the atmosphere on the composition of rainwater in the Dead Sea; The ratio of light reflected from stars to light absorbed (albedo) on polar ice zones; Seafront changes affecting population and settlement history and, in short, problems of non-salinity. In the 1970s, Bloch reverted to the previous (1944) theme of periodic bleaching of the Dead Sea. In Tucson, Arizona, he served as a consultant in copper cleaning, engaged in osmosis processes, ocean bubble bubbles, and brackish groundwater for sewer drainage. Twenty years earlier, Bloch had been thinking of storing solar energy in a medium that superconductors. In one system proposed to use water where the salt concentration gradient is the conductance suppression device. Indeed, this idea developed into a patent for the construction of solar power generating pools in the Dead Sea region. You can say that Prof. Bloch is the father of the solar pools. Another proposed system used a heavy bromine gas gradient for industrial purposes. Today it is hoped to achieve even higher energy utilization than achieved in solar pools at temperatures up to 300 ° C. The issue that concerned Professor Bloch in his last years was the source of oil in nature. He thought there might be a connection between salty streams that transfer organic matter to the deep aquifers to naturally produce oil there. From this perspective, the artificial oil production project grew in the halophyte-containing lagoons (plants capable of developing in salty soil) and protein-rich algae. They produced high-quality oil and a vehicle similar to that found in geological strata. Bloch saw the results encouraging not only as a renewable synthetic energy source but also a step forward on the way to a better understanding of a problem already discussed by many: How was oil created in the past and today?

Prof. Bloch has also served as a research fellow at the Max-Plant Nuclear Physics Institute in Heidelberg Germany devoted to cosmic phenomena and yielded publications on tactites, comet effects and artificial production in the Iron Meteorite Lab.

Dr. M.R. Bloch

1902-1985

Weizmann Institute of Science Award Israel Prize for Science Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University Visiting Professor at the Max Planck Institute, Heidelberg Member of the Israel Research Development Association Honorary member of the Israeli Chemical Society Honorary Doctor at the Weizmann Institute of Science Member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities Member of the Council and Honorary Fellow of the University of Beer-Sheva 1902-1985

• In 1966, Bloch was awarded the Israel Prize in life sciences.[1]
• In 1966, he also was awarded the Weizmann Institute of Science prize for science.
• He held honorary positions at several of Israel's scientific and academic institutes.

• Salt Mirror and Petroleum Formation

• List of Israel Prize recipients