Background
Adler was born in 1895 in Kerelits (Karelichy), then in the Russian Empire, now in Belarus.
Adler was born in 1895 in Kerelits (Karelichy), then in the Russian Empire, now in Belarus.
University of Leeds, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, Leeds, 1917;
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Diploma in Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, 1920;
Membership of the Royal College of Physicians 1937;
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians 1958.
In 1900, he and his family moved to England and they settled in Leeds. In 1921, Adler went to Sierra Leone to conduct research into Malaria. In 1924, Chaim Weizmann offered him a job in Jerusalem to develop the new Institute of Microbiology.
Later that year, he emigrated to Mandate Palestine and started working in Hadassah Hospital, becoming director of the department of parasitology in 1927.
In 1924, he become Assistant Professor of the Department of Parasitology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, serving as Professor from 1928 to 1955. In 1930, in conjunction with Israel Aharoni, Adler had three golden hamsters brought back from Syria and successfully bred them as laboratory animals.
Every domestic hamster that exists today is descended from the three brought back from Syria. Saul Adler died in Jerusalem on 25 January 1966.
His funeral was attended by the President of Israel.
In 1933, Chalmers Medal Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, (London). In 1944, elected Chairman of Free Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1947, received Order of the British Empire (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) In 1957, awarded the Israel Prize, for medicine. In 1957, elected Fellow of the Royal Society (London). He was the first Israeli citizen to be elected. In 1965, awarded Honorary doctorate from the University of Leeds. Awarded the Order of the Phoenix, (Greece). He also received the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation, for his translation of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. He helped find the cure for malaria. A street in Jerusalem is named after him. A room in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was built in his honour. His portraint appeared on a stamp in Israel in 1995. He proposed that Charles Darwin"s "mystery illness" was Chagas Disease (American trypanosomiasis). Although this diagnosis has now been disproved, this proposal did much to excite interest in Darwin"s chronic ill health.
Royal Society; Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
