University President Jehuda Reinharz received an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel Nov. 5. Reinharz said he believed he was honored for his work on a biography of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel and the Institute's namesake. According to its Web site, the Weizmann Institute of Science "is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions," and is "noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences."

In a phone interview with the Justice Friday, Reinharz said that in order to write the biography, he worked for many months looking at documentation in the Institute's archives, which are on its grounds, but are a separate entity.

Reinharz explained that he became interested in Weizmann in the 1970s because of his area of academic expertise is modern Israel, and he "realized that [Weizmann] is one of the founding fathers of the state of Israel about whom there was no scholarly biography as of that date that had been written."

Reinharz said his work was the first serious biography written about Weizmann, including information about Weizmann's scientific career. He said the biography is not complete, as he has written two volumes, completed in 1985 and 1993, respectively, but there are still two more to come.

Reinharz speculated that there was no previous biography of Weizmann because writing one involves researching his chemistry, probably a deterrent for historians unfamiliar with the subject. Still, he called the absence of a Weizmann biography curious "since [Weizmann] was very influential . from the end of the 19th century until the time the state of Israel was founded."

The Weizmann Institute Web site says that "Dr. Reinharz has a long and warm association with the Weizmann Institute," although Reinharz said, "I've given a few lectures at the Institute over the years but I don't have a formal relationship with them."

According to the Web site, Reinharz delivered the Weizmann lecture in the Sciences and Humanities titled "Statecraft as the Art of the Possible" on the Institute's campus, and he and his wife Shulamit have been keynote speakers at Weizmann events in the United States in the past.

Reinharz said he attended the award ceremony at the Institute, which was similar to Brandeis' commencement. He said the Institute normally gives degrees to three people per year and that this year's other honorees were Nobel laureates in various sciences.

Reinharz is also the recipient of honorary doctorates from Hebrew Union College in 1995, the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1996, Fairfield University in Connecticut in 1999 and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2005, according to the Institute's Web site.