1.Tel Aviv University (TAU)
Founded in 1956, Tel Aviv University (TAU) is Israel’s largest and most comprehensive institution of higher learning and research. It offers 125 schools and departments across the spectrum of sciences, humanities and arts; Israel’s biggest bio-medical research and teaching complex; and 128 research centres. At TAU, interdisciplinary collaboration is a core value of the academic culture. The university leads the nation in the number and impact of research publications. More students prefer to study at TAU than at any other university and college in Israel, and TAU’s graduates in the professional fields are the most sought-after in the country.
2.Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was founded in 1918, 30 years before the state of Israel itself was established. It is the second oldest institution in the country, and is known as HUJI.
It counts Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud among the members of its first Board of Governors, and has continued to have a close relationship with some brilliant minds, counting seven Nobel Prizewinners among its faculty and alumni.
Einstein left his personal papers, and their copyright, to HUJI, and they are stored in the Albert Einstein Archives, contains about 55,000 items. This archive has been digitised, and there are plans to make it available online. It includes not only academic work, but also more personal pieces such as love letters to his second wife, Elsa.
HUJI’s main campus is located at Mount Scopus in north-eastern Jerusalem. In total, about 23,000 students study in the institution’s 7 faculties and 14 schools, which include faculties of law; mathematics and science; medicine; dental medicine; and a school of business administration.
The university has also made a number of its courses available for free on the massive open online course platform Coursera, giving students the chance to experience what it might be like to study there.
Courses offered online include one on the subject of modern Hebrew poetry, and another that looks at synapses, neurons and brains.
In addition to its academic stars, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has produced a string of famous faces. Among its alumni are four Israeli presidents, including the incumbant Reuven Rivlin; three prime ministers of Israel; Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman; and former CEO of electronics giant Hewlett-Packard Léo Apotheker.
3.Technion Israel Institute of Technology
Technion Israel Institute of Technology is Israel’s biggest science and engineering university, located in the city of Haifa.
It is made up of 18 faculties offering around 50 undergraduate programmes and dozens of graduate courses, covering the main science and engineering disciplines and associated fields such as architecture, medicine and computer science.
The institute is renowned for the research that it conducts in fields such as biotechnology, space science, nanotechnology, stem cell science, and energy.
Technion researchers have won Nobel Prizes for chemistry on several occasions in recent years, beginning in 2004, when Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko shared the award with an American colleague for their work on protein degradation. In 2011, Dan Chectman took the prize for his work on the formation of quasicrystals, two years before a Technion graduate, Arieh Warshel, was victorious.
The university maintains a network of international relationships, operating the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute in New York in partnership with Cornell University, and opening a campus in China’s Guangdong province.
Technion itself predates the modern state of Israel, having been founded in 1912 in what was then the Ottoman Empire.
The institution was the scene of Israel’s “battle of the languages”, a debate over what the language of instruction should be, with Hebrew eventually being chosen.
In 1923, physicist Albert Einstein visited the site and planted a palm tree which still stands outside the university’s original building in central Haifa.
Later, the university moved to a large site on the north-eastern slopes of Mount Carmel.
Haifa is Israel’s third largest city with a population of more than 250,000 which includes people from a wide range of backgrounds, including Jews, Muslims and Christians.
