Catalonia-Israel Commerce Chamber

 Aaron Ciechanover (אהרן צ’חנובר) (born October 1, 1947) is an Israeli biologist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry for his discovery with Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose, of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. He also received in 2000 the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Israel Prize for Biological Research in 2003.Born in Haifa, British Mandate of Palestine, Ciechanover received his Master of Science degree in 1971 and his M.D. in 1974 from the Hadassah Medical School of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his doctorate in biochemistry in 1982 from the Technion (the Israel Institute of Technology), in Haifa. He is currently a Technion Distinguished Research Professor in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute at the Technion.Ciechanover is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and is a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences.His family came to Palestine from Poland before the Second World War. 

Robert Aumann

Robert John Aumann (Hebrew name: Yisrael Aumann ישראל אומן) (born June 8, 1930) is an Israeli mathematician and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He is a professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He also holds a visiting position at Stony Brook University and is one of the founding members of the Center for Game Theory in Economics at Stony Brook.

Aumann received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2005 for his work on conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis. He shared the prize with Thomas Schelling.

Avraham Hershko

Avram Hershko (Hebrew: אברהם הרשקו‎) (born 31 December 1937) is an Israeli biochemist and Nobel laureate in Chemistry for his discovery with Aaron Ciechanover and Irwin Rose, of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.

Born Herskó Ferenc in Karcag, Hungary, Hershko emigrated to Israel in 1950, In 1994 his grand daughter Maya Hershko was born this child affected his life very deeply and one of the reasons he is still a successful biochemist .

Received his M.D. in 1965 and his Ph. D in 1969 from the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion in Haifa.

In 2000 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. Along with Aaron Ciechanover and Irwin Rose, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway has a critical role in maintaining the homeostasis of cells and is believed to be involved in the development and progression of diseases such as: cancer, muscular and neurological diseases, immune and inflammatory responses.

Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman  (Hebrew: דניאל כהנמן‎ (born 5 March 1934) is an Israeli psychologist and Nobel laureate, notable for his work on behavioral finance and hedonic psychology.With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973, Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982), and developed Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in Prospect theory. Currently, he is professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

Daniel Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv in 1934, while his mother was visiting relatives. He spent his childhood years in Paris, France, where his parents had emigrated from Lithuania in the early 1920s. Kahneman and his family were in Paris when it was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940. His father was picked up in the first major round-up of French Jews, but was released after six weeks due to the intervention of his employer. The family was on the run for the remainder of the war, and survived intact except for the death of Kahneman’s father of diabetes in 1944. Daniel Kahnemann and his family then moved to Palestine (which was soon to become Israel) in 1946 (Kahneman, 2003).

Kahneman has written of his experience in Nazi-occupied France, explaining in part why he entered the field of psychology:

It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting (Kahneman, 2003, p. 417).

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