Making Room Israeli universities are committed to finding work for the glut of scientists coming from the former Soviet Union. GLENN GARELICK SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS el tto do What — with so many scien- tists? Of the nearly 400,000 new to 1111. Israel since 1989 from the former Soviet Union, accord- ing to Israel's Ministry of Ab- sorption, more than 70,000 are scientists, physicians, en- gineers, or technicians — a proportion that by the Minis- try of Science's reckoning rep- resents 10 times the ratio in even the most developed countries of the world. According to a survey by Israel's Center for the Assessment of Higher Edu- cation, moreover, fully two- thirds of new college ap- plicants from the Soviet ali- yah expect to enter scientific fields. At the Technion in Haifa, Israel's leading aca- demic center for the applied sciences, recent immigrants already make up fully a Glenn Garelick, a Washington-based science writer, participated in a recent science tour of Israel, sponsored by Israeli universities. 08 Prof Arye Weinreb (seated) and Dr. Mordechal Deutsch alongside the Cytoscan. quarter of the total of new graduate students — and more than three-quarters of the mathematicians. Not surprisingly, faced with figures like these, Is- raelis have been discovering that finding satisfying posi- tions for scientists and sci- ence students from the for- mer Soviet Union has be- come one of their thorniest problems. That it has been difficult for doctors, of which Israel already has a glut, has been well publicized, as has the plight of researchers in the fields other than mathemat- ics and theoretical physics (in which Soviet training has often proved first-rate). The difficulty of the situation is also well known for many of the immigrant engineers, whose Soviet training at best is often too narrowly focused to be of practical use. But the motive to place these individuals goes be- yond a humanitarian con- cern; many Israelis recog- nize that while some of the immigrants are poorly trained, the best of the Sovi- et influx offer their country opportunities unequaled since the first aliyah. In- deed, says Itamar Ra- binovich, the rector of Tel Aviv University, the pool of new immigrants is "exploding with new tal- ent." At his own campus of 20,000, Mr. Rabinovich says, Soviet immigrants have already given "a tre- mendous boost" to the study of mathematics, phys- ics, and aeronautical engin- eering — fields in which the former Soviet Union was particularly strong. So far the university has hired 200 new immigrant faculty and admitted 2,000 immigrant students. To date, in fact, Tel Aviv University, the Technion, and Israel's five other in- stitutions of higher learning collectively have taken on an amazing 1,000 professionals in either faculty positions, retraining programs, or spe- cial "incubator" projects that they have geared to quickly translate what oth- erwise might be isolated re- search into concrete and commercial technologies. Along with degreed profes- sionals, the schools so far have admitted some 8,000 students. Though these numbers may be just a drop in a bucket of some 70,000, phys- icist Chaim Harari, the pres- ident of the Weizmann In- stitute of Science, points out that even a few topflight re- searchers "can have an enormous impact on Israel and its standing in the world." In addition, he says, such researchers "can be expected to create the basis for new science-based in- dustries, and thus provide job opportunities for other immigrants." Tel Aviv University mathematician Vitali Milman, who arrived in Is- rael in 1973 amid the now well-settled "Third Wave" of 160,000 Soviet im- migrants, agrees. He corn- pares the possibilities to those that the U.S. enjoyed in the years surrounding World War II. The refuge that some German Jewish scientists found in America, Mr. Milman says — not least among them physicists like Albert Einstein — became an immeasurable boon to U.S. science. Mr. Milman's own case helps prove his point. He was one of the many scientif- ic scions of Yuval Ne'eman, a respected Soviet physicist who went on to become pres- ident of Tel Aviv University and Minister of Science and Technology. Through those offices Mr. Ne'eman brought to Tel Aviv University not only Mr. Milman but many other prominent figures in mathematics and physics. To this day, in fact, Mr. Ne'eman remains an influen- tial emissary to potential immigrants among Jewish scientists who are still in Russia, and he has been in- strumental in formulating the landmark Soviet-Israeli Scientific Agreement that has led to the establishment of a Soviet-Israeli Joint Laboratory for Energy Re- search, and an historic agreement on joint space studies between the Tech- nion and Moscow's famous Space Research Institute. From the Soviet emigra- tion, too, it is physics and mathematics that are pro- fiting most. While Russia's five or 10 superstar physi- cists and mathematicians have chosen to settle in the U.S., where salaries are higher and the political fu- ture more secure, Israel has nonetheless taken in a num- ber of world-class experts in those fields. Little by little the country is integrating even many health professionals into its economy. Ben Gurion Univ- ersity of the Negev and the Hebrew University in Jeru- salem offer intensive courses that introduce Russian doc- tors to modern medical ter- minology, equipment, drugs, philosophy, and techniques.