History of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology was Ahad Ha-Am, the distinguished Zionist philosopher. Ahad Ha-Am was able to recruit Wissotsky’s son David to the Technikum plan, and a first contribution of 100,000 rubles was made. In 1908, the American philanthropist Jacob Schiff was visiting the "holy land". Schiff was affected by the poverty and destitution he found among many of the Jews of Palestine and was inspired by the idea of an institution that would provide technical training. Back in Europe, interest in the new Technikum was kept high. In 1909 Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who would later become President of the State of Israel, reported to
Chaim Weizmann personal foibles were representative of class consciousness, which the Zionists overcome through deeds rather than words. C. P. Scott, the editor of "The Manchester Guardian", formed a friendship with Weizmann after the two men encountered each other at a Manchester garden party in 1915. Scott described the diminutive leader as extraordinarily interesting, a rare combination of idealism and the severely practical which are the two essentials of statesmanship a perfectly clear sense conception of jewish nationalism, an intense and burning sense of the Jew as Jew, just as strong, perhaps more so, as that of the German as German or