Chaim Weizmann I. He founded the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and was instrumental in the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Weizmann was born in the village of Motal, located in what is now Belarus and at that time part of the Russian Empire. He was the third of 15 children born to Oizer and Rachel Czemerinsky Weizmann. His father was a timber merchant. From ages four to eleven, he attended a traditional cheder, or Jewish religious elementary school, and he began studying Hebrew as a child. At the age of 11, he entered high school Pinsk, where
Chaim Weizmann Switzerland to complete his studies at the University of Fribourg. In 1898, he attended the Second Zionist Congres in Basel, and that year became engaged to Sophia Getzowa. In 1899, he was awarded a PhD in organic chemistry. That same year, he joined the Organic Chemistry Department at the University of Geneva. In 1901, he was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Geneva. Getzowa and Weizmann were together for four years before Weizmann, who had begun also dating Vera Khatzman in 1900, confessed to Getzowa he was involved with two women. He would not tell his family that he