Chaim Weizmann

Origins and Training, 1874–1913

Weizmann was born on 27 November 1874 in Motol, near Pinsk, in the Russian Empire, in what is now Belarus. His father, Oizer, was a timber merchant [1]. Weizmann studied chemistry at Darmstadt and Berlin, took a doctorate at Fribourg in 1899, and qualified as a university lecturer at Geneva in 1900 [1]. In Switzerland he recruited Russian-Jewish students to Zionism, helped found Zionist societies in three cities, and in 1902 called for a secular Jewish university [1]. He was a prominent figure at Zionist Congresses from the second onward [2].

He moved to Manchester in 1904 [1]. He became a British subject in 1910 and was appointed Reader in Biochemistry at Manchester University in May 1913 [3]. At the 1913 Congress he chaired the Standing Committee and reported on the plan for a Hebrew University [3]. His standing was still modest. In August 1914 his only senior Zionist post was a seat on the 26-member Greater Actions Committee, and he was one of two vice-presidents of the English Zionist Federation [3].

Wartime Science and the Balfour Declaration, 1914–1920

In February 1915 Weizmann showed the firm Nobel’s Explosives a fermentation process for making acetone. Acetone was essential to cordite, an explosive propellant, and the war had created a shortage [3]. Later scientific literature dates his isolation of the bacterium behind the process to 1914 [4]. The Admiralty made him honorary technical adviser on acetone supplies on 1 September 1915. The Ministry of Munitions, then led by David Lloyd George, named him chemical adviser the same month [3]. The work brought him into regular contact with ministers [3].

He used that access for Zionism. Early in the war he predicted that Palestine would fall under British influence and that Zionists could give Britain a barrier protecting the Suez Canal [3]. He became president of the English Zionist Federation in February 1917 [3]. On 13 June 1917 he asked the Foreign Office for a public declaration. On 19 June he and Lord Rothschild met Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, who asked for a draft [3]. Weizmann took no part in preparing it. Nahum Sokolow and a small group of advisers did [3]. A Zionist Organisation letter to the War Cabinet signed by Rothschild and Weizmann is dated 3 October 1917 [5]. Balfour’s letter of 2 November 1917 promised support for “a national home for the Jewish people”. It added that the rights of existing non-Jewish communities must not be prejudiced [6].

In January 1919 Weizmann signed a cooperation agreement with Emir Faisal of the Hejaz. The text includes a proviso tying it to Arab independence as demanded in a memorandum of 4 January 1919 [7]. In 1920 Weizmann was elected president of the World Zionist Organization [2]. He held the office until 1931 and again from 1935 to 1946 [1].

Major Decisions

Alignment with Britain, 1917–1946

Weizmann judged that Zionism needed a Great Power sponsor and that Britain was the best candidate [3]. The policy produced the Balfour Declaration, but it left him exposed when London changed course. The Passfield White Paper of October 1930 restricted Jewish immigration and land purchase, and he resigned the presidency. Talks then produced the MacDonald letter of February 1931. It restated that facilitating Jewish immigration remained a positive obligation under the Mandate, the League of Nations charter under which Britain governed Palestine [8]. At the Basel Congress in July 1931 he was reported, in a news interview, as having no sympathy for a demand for a Jewish majority in Palestine. He refused to retract the remark. The Congress voted 123 to 106 to express regret, and Sokolow replaced him [8].

Britain’s White Paper of May 1939 declared that Palestine would not become a Jewish state. It capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years, after which Arab consent would be required [9]. On 29 August 1939 Weizmann still wrote to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Jews stood with Britain, and he offered Jewish manpower and resources [10]. In 1946 the Basel Congress ended his presidency. More militant leaders rejected his policy of restraint and cooperation with Britain [11]. The Revisionist movement, led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, had long attacked his British ties [12].

Partition, 1937–1947

In January 1937 Reginald Coupland, a member of the Peel Commission (the British inquiry into unrest in Palestine), raised with Weizmann the idea of dividing the country into Arab and Jewish states. Weizmann then won French Premier Léon Blum’s endorsement [13]. At the Zurich Congress in August 1937, delegates voted 300 to 158, according to the US consul there, to let the Executive negotiate with Britain on a partition scheme [14]. A British technical commission advised against partition, and the Cabinet rejected it in November 1938 [13][15].

In 1947 Weizmann pressed the case again. After a UN committee recommended partition, he addressed the UN Ad Hoc Committee on 18 October. The General Assembly voted 33 to 13 for partition on 29 November [11]. His stated reasoning, given to Truman in April 1948, was that Palestine held two peoples with separate political aspirations and common economic interests [16]. The decision meant accepting a Jewish state on part of the land, and the state’s legitimacy then rested on an international vote. Arab states had threatened force to block partition. In 1948 Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria attacked the new state [11].

Winning Truman, 1947–1948

After the vote Weizmann concentrated on President Harry Truman. Truman received him on 19 November 1947 and again on 18 March 1948 [11]. The next day American officials proposed a trusteeship in place of partition [11]. In April Weizmann wrote to Truman that the choice for the Jewish people was between statehood and extermination. A file note records that the letter went unanswered [16]. Accounts of the meetings differ. The editors of the State Department’s historical series found no official record of the March conversation [17]. On 14 May 1948 the United States gave de facto recognition, meaning recognition in practice, to the Provisional Government of Israel [11]. After a visit in late May, Weizmann wrote asking for military and financial help [18]. In November 1948 Truman wrote that he agreed on the importance of the Negev and deplored any attempt to take it from Israel [19]. Truman made the decision, and the record does not show how far the March meeting changed it.

Head of State Without Power, 1948–1952

The Provisional State Council, the interim parliament, chose Weizmann as its president in May 1948 while he was in the United States [11][12]. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said no living person deserved the post more [12]. Weizmann reached Rehovot in late September [11]. In late October he gave a speech against militarism in Israeli society, and a Revisionist newspaper called it sabotage in wartime [12]. His private letters sound different. He sought anti-aircraft guns for Israel and told Leopold Amery, a former British colonial secretary, that he doubted Israeli forces would yield any territory [11].

The first Knesset elected him president on 16 February 1949. On 24 February he asked Ben-Gurion to form the first elected government [20]. Herut, the opposition party of Menachem Begin, backed Joseph Klausner against him, though it later separated respect for the office from opposition to the man [12]. The president’s powers were limited. Weizmann asked whether the post carried real authority and drafted resignation letters, including an unsent one in January 1951 [11]. In 1951 two Knesset members petitioned the High Court against his decision not to ask another candidate to form a government after the second government fell [12]. The Knesset re-elected him in November 1951, with Herut among the few factions voting against, and he took the oath at his Rehovot home on 25 November [12][21].

The Daniel Sieff Research Institute, founded in 1934, was inaugurated in 1949 as the Weizmann Institute of Science [22]. Construction had begun in April 1933 [8]. Weizmann died on 9 November 1952 and was buried in the garden of his house, now part of the Institute’s campus [21].

Legacy

Weizmann turned a British letter into a lasting diplomatic base. Jehuda Reinharz, co-author of the longest biography, argues that without Weizmann there would be no state of Israel, and that he made Britain treat the Balfour letter as an obligation [23]. That is a biographer’s judgement, not a settled finding. The documents support a narrower claim. He was the movement’s main negotiator with British governments from 1917 and with Truman in 1947 and 1948 [3][11]. He also founded the scientific institution that bears his name [22].

In One Paragraph

Chaim Weizmann, born in 1874 in the Russian Empire, became a Manchester chemist whose wartime acetone work gave him access to British ministers. He helped secure the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and led the Zionist movement in two terms between 1920 and 1946. He committed it to a British partnership that later proved costly. He backed partition in 1937 and 1947 and worked to persuade President Truman to support the new state in 1948. Sidelined by more militant colleagues, he served from 1948 as Israel’s first head of state with limited powers and died in 1952. His career links the diplomacy that gave Zionism its international footing with the founding of the state.

Sources

1. Kaufmann, Robert Uri. “Weizmann, Chaim.” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz. Version of March 7, 2013. https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/027849/2013-03-07/.
2. Jewish Agency for Israel. “Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952).” Archive of the Jewish Agency website. Accessed October 14, 2026. https://archive.jewishagency.org/news/content/25990.
3. Stein, Leonard. Introduction to The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A, vol. 7, August 1914–November 1917. Edited by Leonard Stein with Dvorah Barzilay and Nehama A. Chalom; general editor Meyer W. Weisgal. London: Oxford University Press; Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1975. Reprinted with permission of the Weizmann Archives by the Center for Israel Education. https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Weizmann-vol-7.pdf.
4. Oehlenschläger, Katharina, Jan-Niklas Hengsbach, Marianne Volkmar, and Roland Ulber. “From Pre-Culture to Solvent: Current Trends in Clostridium acetobutylicum Cultivation.” Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 109, no. 1 (2025): article 47, Introduction. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-025-13428-y. Open-access text: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11835921/.
5. UK Foreign Office. “Zionist Organisation Letter to the War Cabinet Signed by Rothschild and Weizmann.” October 3, 1917. FO 371/3083 (92). The National Archives, Kew. https://images.nationalarchives.gov.uk/asset/61305/.
6. Balfour, Arthur James. Letter to Lord Rothschild, November 2, 1917. Reproduced in “Walter Rothschild and the Balfour Declaration.” The Rothschild Archive. https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/family_interests/walter_rothschild_and_the_balfour_declaration.
7. “Text of the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement.” January 3, 1919. United Nations Question of Palestine (UNISPAL) document collection. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-207006.
8. Dresner, Camillo. Introduction to The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A, vol. 15, October 1930–June 1933. Volume editor Camillo Dresner; general editor Barnet Litvinoff. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, Rutgers University; Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1978. Reprinted with permission of the Weizmann Archives by the Center for Israel Education. https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Weizmann-vol-15.pdf.
9. UK Secretary of State for the Colonies. “Palestine: Statement of Policy.” Cmd. 6019. May 1939. UNISPAL. https://www.un.org/unispal/?p=198767.
10. Weizmann, Chaim. Letter to Neville Chamberlain, August 29, 1939. In “Jewish Army in Palestine, Proposal, 1939–1943.” Abba Hillel Silver Papers, MS-4787. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati. https://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms4787/ms4787.101.035.0080.pdf.
11. Klieman, Aaron. Introduction to The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A, vol. 23, August 1947–June 1952. Volume editor Aaron Klieman with Nehama A. Chalom; general editor Barnet Litvinoff. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, Rutgers University; Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1980. Reprinted with permission of the Weizmann Archives by the Center for Israel Education. https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Weizmann-vol-23.pdf.
12. Wechsler, Shoham. “‘He Is Living Israeli Flag’: The Right and the Presidency in Israel under Chaim Weizmann, 1948–1952.” Middle Eastern Studies 60, no. 2 (2024): 308–19. Published online May 3, 2023. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2023.2186858.
13. Klieman, Aaron. Introduction to The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A, vol. 18, January 1937–December 1938. Center for Israel Education, posted September 6, 2019. https://israeled.org/volume-xviii-series-a-january-1937-december-1938/.
14. U.S. Department of State. “The Consul General at Zurich (Frost) to the Secretary of State.” Telegram 867N.01/848, August 13, 1937. In Foreign Relations of the United States, 1937, vol. 2. Digital edition, University of Wisconsin Libraries. https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AWYSSDMUO67R4I8D/text/AMM4JVSHUP2ZFU8O.
15. UK Secretary of State for the Colonies. “Policy Statement/Advice against Partition.” Cmd. 5893. November 1938. UNISPAL. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-197568.
16. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. “Dr. Chaim Weizmann to President Truman.” Letter, April 1948 (copy sent to the Secretary of State on April 9). Document 139 in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, vol. 5, part 2, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d139.
17. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. “Editorial Note” on the March 18, 1948, Truman–Weizmann conversation. Document 101 in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, vol. 5, part 2. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d101.
18. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. “The President of the Provisional Government of Israel (Weizmann) to President Truman.” Letter, May 26, 1948. Document 323 in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, vol. 5, part 2. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d323.
19. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. “President Truman to the President of the Provisional Government of Israel (Weizmann).” Letter, November 29, 1948. Document 795 in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, vol. 5, part 2. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d795.
20. Israel State Archives. “The Elected Authorities of the State.” Israel State Archives online catalog. https://catalog.archives.gov.il/site/en/chapter/elected-authorities-state.
21. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Chaim Weizmann.” About Israel: The State. https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/state/Pages/Chaim%20Weizmann.aspx.
22. Weizmann Institute of Science. “About the Weizmann Institute of Science.” https://www.weizmann.ac.il/acadaff/Current_Research/2000/intro.html.
23. Pollard, Stephen. “Chaim Weizmann: ‘I Am Now Convinced That without Him There Would Be No State of Israel.’” The Jewish Chronicle, May 3, 2024. Interview with Jehuda Reinharz, co-author of Chaim Weizmann: A Biography (Brandeis University Press, 2024). https://www.thejc.com/life/chaim-wiezmann-i-am-now-convinced-that-without-him-there-would-be-no-state-of-israel-xw9kbcmt.