Weizmann was absent from the first Zionist conference, held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, because of travel problems, but he attended the Second Zionist Congress in 1898 and each one thereafter. Beginning in 1901, he lobbied for the founding of a Jewish institution of higher learning in Palestine. Together with Martin Buber and Berthold Feiwel, he presented a document to the Fifth Zionist Congress highlighting this need especially in the fields of science and engineering. This idea would later be crystallized in the foundation of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1912.