WEIZAC The WEIZAC project was initiated by Prof. Chaim L. Pekeris, who worked at the IAS at the time von Neumann's IAS machine was being designed. Chaim Weizmann, Israel's future first president, asked Pekeris to establish the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute, and Pekeris wanted to have a similar computer available there. Pekeris wanted it as means to solve Laplace’s tidal equations for the Earth's oceans, and also for the benefit of the entire scientific community of Israel, including the Defense Ministry. In July 1947, an advisory committee for the Applied Mathematics Department discussed the plan to build
Chaim Weizmann subject in 1910 with the help of "haham" Moses Gaster, who asked for papers from Herbert Samuel, the minister. He revered Britain but relentlessly pursued Jewish freedom. Weizmann was head of the Democratic Fraction of Zionism, whose radical aims alienated the London politicals. He was "pre-eminently what the Jewish people call folks-mensch...a man of the people, of the masses, not of a elite, a leader in whose breast beat the common heart of a man". Typically a sturdy yeoman, with a dome-shaped forehead, a short dark beard covering cheeks and jawline. This Belarus man from Motol had attended all but