SIMON, ERNST

SIMON, ERNST (1902–1973), Israeli biochemist. Simon was born in Berlin and received his education at the universities of Munich, Jena, and Berlin. In 1925, he was appointed research assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biochemistry in Berlin, where he remained until Hitler's rise to power in 1933, when he moved to Paris and joined the Institute of Biological Physicochemistry there. He immigrated to Ereẓ Israel in 1935, joining the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, the forerunner of the Weizmann Institute of Science, a few months after its foundation, and remained at the Weizmann Institute until his death. He spent his early years there working closely with Weizmann on problems of fermentation, but was best known in later years for his pioneering studies on the mechanism of diabetes, carried out in the department of biodynamics.