Israel Jacob Kligler (Hebrew: ישראל יעקב קליגלר; 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.
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.
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