FAHN, ABRAHAM

FAHN, ABRAHAM (1916– ), botanist. Fahn was born in Vienna but grew up in Halicz and went to school there and in Stanislawow (Poland). He immigrated to Ereẓ Israel in 1935. Fahn studied biology at the Hebrew University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1948. In 1952–53 he did research at the Jodrell Laboratory, Kew, and in the school of Botany at Cambridge, England. In 1956 he was a research fellow at Harvard University and in 1965 he was appointed full professor at the Hebrew University. Fahn published a number of scientific books: Plant Anatomy (in Hebrew, 1962; translated into English, Spanish, Indonesian, and Chinese); Secretory Tissues in Plants (in English, 1979); and, with coauthors, Wood Anatomy and the Identification of Trees and Shrubs of Israel and Adjacent Regions (in English, 1986); Xerophytes (in English, 1992); and The Cultivated Plants of Israel (in Hebrew, 1998). Fahn was dean of the Faculty of Science in 1963–66. He is an honorary member of leading scientific societies, foreign member of the Linnaean Society of London, and corresponding member of the Botanical Society of America. He was awarded the Israel Prize for science in 1963. (Bracha Rager (2nd ed.)