Prof. Selig Brodetsky

English Wikipedia

תדהר

Selig Brodetsky (10 February 1888 – 20 May 1954) was a Russian-born English mathematician, a member of the World Zionist Executive, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and the second president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Brodetsky was born in Olviopol (near Odessa), Ukraine (now Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv Oblast), the second of 13 children born to Akiva Brodetsky (the beadle of the local synagogue) and Adel (Prober). As a child, he witnessed the murder of his uncle in a pogrom. In 1894, the family followed Akiva to the East End of London, to where he had migrated a year earlier. Brodetsky attended the Jews' Free School, where he excelled at his studies. He was awarded a scholarship, which enabled him to attend the Central Foundation Boys' School of London and subsequently, in 1905, Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1908, he completed his studies with highest honours being Senior Wrangler, to the distress of the conservative press, which was forced to recognise that a son of immigrants surpassed all the local students. The Newton scholarship enabled him to study at Leipzig University where he was awarded a doctorate in 1913. His dissertation dealt with the gravitational field.

In 1919, he married Manya Berenblum, whose family had recently emigrated from Belgium, where her father had been a diamond merchant in Antwerp. She bore him two children, Paul and Adele, in 1924 and 1927.