Background
George Schneiweis (later Wise) was born in Pinsk, White Russia, Russian Empire in 1906.
George Schneiweis (later Wise) was born in Pinsk, White Russia, Russian Empire in 1906.
He graduated from Furman University in 1928 and got his advanced studies at Columbia University.He married Florence Rosenberg, who died on January 11, 2013 at the age of a hundred.
He emigrated to the United States in 1926. He died in Miami Beach, Florida on July 2, 1987 after suffering from heart failure for several months. Wise taught Sociology at Columbia in 1930, a post he held until 1952.
He became internationally known as an expert in Latin American and Israeli affairs, with a particular focus on caudillo dictatorships that were common in Latin American politics at the time.
In 1951 he wrote a biography of Antonio Guzmán Blanco, the former dictator of Venezuela which was published by Columbia University Press. A known Zionist, he was chairman of the board for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In 1951, he was named president of the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1953, he was elected the head of the Hebrew University Board of Governors.
As head, Wise led a major expansion program of the University, and still held the honor of "chancellor for life" at the time of his death.
He became the first president of Tel Aviv University in 1963. He was the owner of Wise and Company and the Inter-American Paper Corporation, both newsprint manufacturers. According to the Los Angeles Times, he built the "first newsprint plant" in Mexico.
The Wise Observatory and the.
Wise was also director of the Center for Advanced International Studies and a member of the board of governors for the University of Miami.
