York Lecturer Series

A native of Los Angeles, California, Dr. Daniel Hillel was taken at an early age to Palestine. He spent part of his childhood in pioneering settlements in the Jezreel and Jordan Valleys, where he acquired a lifelong interest in agriculture and ecology.

After World War II, he returned to the United States to complete his high school and college education. In 1951, after earning a master's degree in earth sciences at Rutgers University, he went to Israel to help in the young state's development.

He took part in surveying the country's land and water resources and was a founding member of Sde Boker, the first settlement in the Negev Highlands. While there, he conducted scientific studies of desert ecology and hydrology and was awarded Israel's first doctorate in soil physics by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In late 1956, he was invited to participate in land development projects in Southeast Asia, where he worked for two years and had the opportunity to travel widely and study the ecology of the humid tropics.

After a two-year stint as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Hillel was appointed head of Soil Technology and later of the Soil and Water Institute of Israel's Agricultural Research Service, in which capacity he initiated studies of soil and water management and played a leading role in developing more efficient methods of irrigation. In 1966, he was invited to join the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He served as professor and head of the Department of Soil and Water Sciences until 1974.

In the course of his subsequent career, Hillel became increasingly involved in international development projects, working with United Nations agencies as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the International Development Research Centre. He has served as consultant on land and water management in over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, and South America and conducted joint research in such countries as Australia, Japan, Holland, Belgium, France, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Iran, and the Philippines. Hillel also cooperated widely with colleagues and institutions in the United States and served for varying periods as a visiting scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and at major US universities. In 1977, he took a position as professor of soil physics and hydrology at the University of Massachusetts.

Hillel's research has gradually become more comprehensive and oriented to the larger environment, from studies of soil-water dynamics to soil-plant-water relations to the formulation and testing of mathematical models of water and solute transport in natural systems and the prevention of groundwater pollution. The published results of his research are widely regarded as definitive and are cited extensively in the scientific and professional literature. He was awarded a patent for his invention of a novel method to conserve soil moisture.

He was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Soil Science, and the American Society of Agronomy; he also served for several years as National Lecturer for Sigma Xi, the national scientific honor society. Among the honors he has received are the Chancellor's Medal for exemplary service at the University of Massachusetts (1982), a Doctorate of Science honoris causa by Guelph University of Canada (1992), and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and grant (1993).

In the course of his career to date, Hillel has published well over 200 scientific papers and research reports, embodying his contributions to both fundamental and applied aspects of environmental physics. He has authored and edited 16 books. His definitive textbooks on solid physics are widely used by numerous universities and research institutes throughout the world and have been translated and issued in a dozen languages.

-Biography Originally Compiled March 28, 1995