Prof. David Amiran

(1910-2003)

David Amiran (Kelner) was born in Berlin in 1910. His father was a physician, the son of a family which  emigrated from Lithuania to Germany. The family was religious, and his father was a Zionist aspiring to live in the Holy Land. Upon graduating from high school in 1929, he decided to go and study Geography in Freiburg, Germany. There he was deeply influenced works and teaching of Hans Schrepfer. He followed him to Frankfurt and studied for a short while in Berlin as well.

  At the end of 1932, Amiran left for Moscow to take part in a geomorphologic survey in the south of the Ural Mountains. Since by then Hitler had taken control over the German government, he was reluctant to return to Germany.  Instead he went to the University of Bern in Switzerland where he wrote his doctorate about river terraces in Italy. After submitting his dissertation, in the summer of 1935 Amiran arrived in Jerusalem where he believed he would be able to find a position suited to his academic qualifications.  There he was taken under the wing of Prof. Leo Picard, to work in the Geology library of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  Two years later, with Picard’s assistance, he received a financial grant for the preparation of the Eretz Israel Atlas, a project which earned him the post of  “Teaching Colleague” at the university in 1940.

  Towards the end of the 1930’s he had also participated in a Haganah Officers’ course at ‘Kiryat Anavim’.   When the Second World War broke out, Amiran enlisted in the British army, and served as an officer in its Mapping unit, which was located in Egypt (where he served with Yehuda Karmon). Once demobilized at the war’s end, he was hired to serve as vice manager of the Government Meteorological Service, where he worked for two years until Israel’s War of Independence broke out. During the war he went back to the Haganah, became a battalion commander in Jerusalem, and served in other administrative capacities. After the second armistice he became deputy commander for the IDF Mapping and Aerial Photos Unit (where Isaac Schattner served as well).

  In 1949, Amiran was invited by the authorities of the  Hebrew University to establish the Geography department as part of the University’s developmental plans now that the Israeli state had been founded. During the 1950’s David Amiran became the Israeli Geography representative within the International Geographical Union. He was chosen to serve as a member of various IGU committees, such as the Committee on the Arid Zone and the Commission on Man and Environment. Within these frameworks he went to South America to become an adviser in desert related issues, returning to the region during the Sixties and Seventies.

In the second half of the 1950’s, with Teddy Kolek acting as the facilitator, Amiran was appointed to head the Negev Studies Institute in Be’er Sheva, as well as the Scientific Council in the Prime Minister’s office. In this office he also sat on the Governmental Names Committee, which assigned Hebrew names to the dozens of new settlements born at that time, and to geographical sites throughout the country.

In the course of the years he held various positions within the Hebrew University Administration, including vice president of the University. He also acted to broaden the University’s research infrastructure,  establishing and becoming the first Director of  the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies

David Amiran’s life story is the story of pioneer initiation and management within the fields of scientific research and the academic institutions of Israel. The importance of Amiran’s life work may be seen in the  evolution of the Geography department of the Hebrew University.  During the 1950’s he spearheaded the construction of the Geography  building on Givat Ram, and lived to see the transfer of part of the department to the renewed Mount Scopus’s campus. For many years he headed the department, nurtured the development of the teaching faculty and administrative staff, designed the curriculum and developed the research and advanced degree programs. Over a period of thirty years Amiran raised generations of students. They became researchers,  staffed academic Institutes, served as planners in the various agencies, and provided the faculty and staff that built the Geography departments within the country’s other Universities and colleges.

Scientific Work

  Evaluating David Amiran’s scientific work means evaluating the growth and strengthening of modern Geography in Israel during the last two generations. Reviewing Amiran’s scientific publications, over 120 in number, reveals his great contribution to the development of all Modern Geography branches in Israel, in the setting of scientific research directions and methods for generations of students who over the course of the years became colleagues in research, teaching, and maintaining a special focus on the geography of Eretz Israel.  A special combination of qualities characterizes Amiran’s scientific work, the essence of which was his interest in and study of major issues cutting across all realms of Geography: Morphology, Cartography, Climatology, Regional Geography, Rural and Urban Geography, Regional development and Environmental problems. The themes of his scientific projects and teaching fields evolved from Geomorphology and Climate in the Thirties and Forties, through the emphasis on Urban settlement in the Fifties and Sixties, and extending to a profound interest in Regional development issues (most notably Arid Areas),  as well as in development activities negatively affecting Israel’s  Environmental Quality. While his research areas kept changing and renewing, his basic research approach remained constant - a comprehensive approach, always looking for reciprocal affects between natural conditions and human activity  He used geomorphological and climatic data to reveal the challenges faced by man in the process of development and spatial and economic change.

An important characteristic of Amiran’s work is his identification of regional development potential on the basis  of the physical advantages and limitations of the area. Underlying this approach (the reciprocal relationships of man and natural environment), is a humanistic view of education and knowledge diffusion as the principal conditions for harmonic and efficient connections between human activity and natural resources. A second prominent quality in all of Amiran’s scientific works, is his establishment of geographical research on grounds of meticulous and methodological fieldwork. A series of articles dealing with Eretz Israel’s array of settlements and the unique map in the Israel Atlas, dedicated to topological location of settlements are good examples of  geographical observation and analysis skills, and meticulous documentation of fieldwork.

Likewise, The Jerusalem Atlas of 1973, is based on precise, painstaking fieldwork in which all the structural elements of Jerusalem from the end of the 1930’s were examined and documented in a set of thematic maps. These served as a basis for comparing and analyzing urban geographical issues for many years after the fieldwork was conducted.

  In  the 1980s, David Amiran published a series of articles which were temporal and spatial summations of several major areas with which he dealt. The first among these was land use research - land as a basic resource for man’s habitation and land use transformations. He viewed both as efficient mediators of political, economic and technological changes, which every society experiences in its formative and developing stages. The characteristic of these articles is his commitment to the concept that “The value of physical resources, including that of land, is determined by the knowledge of the population using these resources”. This approach in Amiran’s research is expressed in his belief that ”there is nothing to physical resources but what man can do with them”, and by the unbreakable connection he perceives  between Physical Geography (The Origin of Resources), and Geography of man and the cautious  exploitation of these resources.

  The climax of David Amiran’s research synthesis was the publication of the Israel Atlas. This national atlas of Israel was published in three editions. Amiran headed the national Atlas desk in its various editions and was highly influential in determining its content and form. The Israel Atlas is a cartographic and verbal summation of geographical knowledge about Eretz Israel in all its aspects - physical, historical and humanistic.

  Studying the developmental potential of arid areas through the exploitation of climatic advantages that are unique to these areas by applying sophisticated technology in irrigation and growing methods, was a major theme of Amiran’s scientific work.  This interest was expressed in a number of scientific publications dealing with different aspects of desert studies in Israel and other parts of the world. The centrality of the desert research and its population development possibilities in Amiran’s scientific work is evidenced by the fact that approximately one third of his total publications deal with this topic.

This approach to Arid Areas studies was applied also to South America, a special regional interest in Amiran’s research and teaching.   He conducted research in Arid Areas planning and development in the vast drought regionof North-East Brazil and along the Pacific coastal deserts of Chile and Peru.  Much of this South American international development work took place at the invitation of the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture and North-East Brazil’s Regional Planning Authority.

  David Amiran’s scientific studies of deserts in Israel and internationally had a lasting impact on Israeli Geography, with its focus on the close connection between geographical research and spatial development. Amiran’s Arid Areas research would not settle for the study of natural factors’ influence over human activity, nor would he take for granted the common perception of the desert as doomed to remain forever uninhabited. His research was instrumental in demonstrating development possibilities and changed our perception of habitation potential in Arid Areas. This applied approach, which sees regional development and expanding the inhabited area as an important national goal, served as an inspiration to many Israeli geographers who have followed his footsteps in the  Geography of Development.

  To complete the research cycle of the Geography of Habitation, Amiran turned to  the realm of Rural and Urban Geography. The series of Maps and Texts which accompany them in chapters of the Urban and Rural settlements in Atlas of Israel represent the result of exhaustive research. Within the Urban Geography realm, Amiran’s contribution was decisive in shaping  major research directions, principle research questions, and unique research methods for the urban study.

His research encompassed all urban settlement forms, from Jerusalem, through Israel’s other large cities, to its development towns.

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Non Hebrew Selected works

Books

Studien zur Geomorphologie des Anienetales im westlichen Zentralappennin, Hirt, Breslau 1935. 64 pp

Yugoslavia: Index Gazetteer, Survey Directorate,GHQ ME, 1944, II vols.

Palestine: Index Gazetteer, Survey Directorate, GHQ ME 1945, v+205 pp. [2nd edit., Survey of Palestine, 1948].

Geographical Conversion Tables (with A.P. Schick), Intern. Geograph. Union, Zurich 1961, XXXVI & 315 pp.

 

Land-use in Semi-Arid Mediterranean Climates (Amiran, ed.), UNESCO, Arid Zone Research XXVI (I 964), 170 pp.

Atlas of Israel (second edition), (with J. Elster, M. Gilead, N. Rosenan, N. Kadmon, U. Paran), Jerusalem, Survey of Israel & Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1970, 71 sheets.

Atlas of Jerusalem (with A. Shachar, 1. Kimhi, M. Karmon, P. Bandel, eds.), Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1973, 53 sheets - 108 maps.

Urban Geography of Jerusalem: a Companion Volume to the Atlas of Jerusalem (with A. Shachar & 1. Kimhi, eds.), Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1973, 173 pp.

Coastal Deserts: Their Natural and Human Environments (with A.W. Wilson, eds.), Univ. of Arizona Press, 1973, XIII+207 pp.

Geography in Israel. A Collection of Papers offered to the 23rd International Geographical Congress, USSR, July-August, 1976 (with Y. Ben-Arieh, eds.), Jerusalem, Israel National Committee, International Geographical Union, 1976, 396 pp.

Atlas of Israel (third edition), (with R. Adler, H. Eliakim, M. Gilead, Y. Hinberger, N. Kadmon, M. Kantor, A. Shachar, R. Tsameret), Tel Aviv, Survey of Israel, New York, Macmillan, London, Collier-Macmillan, 1985, 40 sheets

 

Articals

 

Die maximale Reliefenergie Westdeutschlands (with H. Schrepfer). Petermann's Geograph. Mitteilungen 76 (1930), pp. 225-227, tab. 15.

Zur 'diluvialen Vegletscherung' des r6mischen Apennins, Zeitschrift fur Gletscherkunde 21 (1933-34),pp.370-372.

Zur Geographie des slidlichen Urals, Petermann'sGeograph. Mitteilungen 82 (1936), pp. 141-143.

Grundzlige der Morphologie des Slid-Ural, Zeitschrift fur Geomorphologie 9 (1936), pp.180-203.

Landschaft und Mensch im Slid-Ural, Mitteilungend. Geograph. Gesellschaft, Wien 79 (1936), pp.143-158.

Goletzterrassen im Slid-Ural? Zeitschrijt for Geomorphologie 10 (1937), pp. 63-64.

Die Landkarten Palastinas, Palastina 20 (1937), pp. 132-136.

Verkehrsgeographische Wandlungen Palastinas, Palastina 20 (1937), pp. 225-232.

 

The Geographical Regions of Palestine (with E. Rosenan), Geographical Review 29 (1939), pp.61-80.

   Outlines of the Geomorphology of Judea, Bulletin, Societe de Geographie d'Egypte 21 (1943), pp.35-49.

Jacotin's Map of Palestine, surveyed during Napoleon's campaign in 1799, PEQ 76 (1944), pp.157-163.

Geomorphology of the Central Negev Highlands, IEJ 1 (1950-51), pp. 107-120.

 

A Revised Earthquake-catalogue of Palestine, IEJ 1 (1950-51), pp. 223-246; 2 (1952), pp. 48-65.

The Pattern of Settlement in Palestine, IEJ 3 (1953), pp. 65-78, 192-209, 250-260.

Early Excessive Rainfall and Soil Erosion in Israel (with M. Gilead), IEJ 4 (1954), pp. 286-295.

The Geographical Regions of Israel, in: R. Bachi, B. Gil, Miihsam, M. Sicron, edit.: Registration of Population, 1948, Jerusalem 1955, pp. XIV­XXV.

Sites of Settlements in the Mountains of Lower Galilee, IEJ 6 (1956), pp. 69-77.

The 'Lake' of Dalton: Agam Dalton (with D. Nir and A.P. Schick), IEJ 9 (1959), pp. 246-259.

Two Types of Border of Aridity in Palestine, ibid., II, 1960, pp. 461-465.

Estimates of the Urban Population of Palestine in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (withA. Shachar), IEJ 10 (1960), pp. 181-183.

The Towns of Israel: The Principles of their Urban Geography (with A. Shachar), Geographical Review 51 (1961), pp. 348-369 [= Ekistics 13 (1962), pp. 98-102].

Effects of Climatic Change in an Arid Environment on Land-use Patterns, in: UNESCO, Arid Zon  Research XX (1963), pp. 437-442.

Sedentarization of Beduin in Israel (with Y. Ben­ Arieh), IEJ 13 (1963), pp. 161-181.

Nomadic and Beduin Population in the Census Returns of Mandatory Palestine, IEJ 13 (1963), pp.247-252.

L'utilisation du sol en Israel, Annales de Geographie 72 (1963), pp. 693-719.

 

The Expansion of the Dead Sea Works (with Y. Karmon), Tijdschrifi voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 55 (1964), pp. 210-223.

Arid Zone Development: A Reappraisal under Modern Technological Conditions, Economic Geography 41 (1965), pp. 189-210 [=F.E. Dohrs & LM. Sommers (eds.), Economic Geography: Selected Readings, Crowell, New York 1970, pp. 95-121].

Man in Arid Lands. Chapters X-XI in: E.S. Hills (ed.), Arid Lands: A Geographical Appraisal, Methuen, London 1966, pp. 219-254.

Geographic Considerations in Plans for Development, in: H.E. Dregne (ed.), Arid Lands in Transition, Amer. Association for Advancement of Science, Publ. No. 90, 1970, pp.89-103.

 

Changes in Rural Settlement Structure. in: W.P. Adams & F.M. Helleiner (eds.), International Geography, 1972, Univ. of Toronto Press, 1972, pp. 700-702.

 

Impact of Changing Technology on a Semi­arid Area: The Beth-Shan Basin in Israel, in: G.F. White, (ed.), Man and Environment, Proc. of Symposium at 22nd Intern. Geogr. Congress, Calgary, 1972, Boulder, Colorado 1972, 11 pp.

 

The Aravah: Influences of Different Technologies on an Arid Environment, in: G.F. White (ed.), Man and Environment, Proc. Symposium, 22nd Intern. Geograph. Congress, Calgary 1972, Boulder, Colorado, 1972. 16 pp.

 

The Settlement Structure in Rural Areas: Implications of Functional Changes in Planning, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 27 (1973), pp. 1-4.

 

The Development of Jerusalem, 1860-1970, in: Urban Geography of Jerusalem: a Companion Volume to the Atlas of Jerusalem (with A. Shachar & I. Kimhi, eds.), Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1973, Ch. 2, pp. 20-52.

The Impact of Changing Technology on a Semi­ arid Area: The Beth-Shan Basin in Israel, in: J.G. Nelson & R.c. Scace (eds.), Impact of Technology on Environments: Some Global Examples, Studies in Land Use History & Landscape Change 6, London, Ontario 1974, pp. 5-23.

Environmental Constraints and Opportunities for Development: The Changing Values of Land for Man, Geography in Israel, Collection of Papers offered to the 23rd International Geographical Congress, USSR, July-August, 1976 (with Y. Ben-Arieh, eds.), Jerusalem, Israel National Committee, International Geographical Union, 1976, pp. 9-23.

 National Parks and Nature Reserves in Israel: The Case of a Country with a Long Record ofOccupancy (with A. Dvir & U. Paz), ibid, pp. 225-274 [reprinted in: J.G. Nelson, R.D. Needham & D.L. Mann (eds.), International Experience with National Parks and Related Reserves, Univ. of Waterloo, Dept. of Geography, Publ. Series No. 12., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 1978, pp. 359-380.

Specialized Rural Development under Marginal Arid Conditions, International Geography 1976 (XXIII Intern. Geographical Congress), Vol. 8, Regional Geography, Moscow 1976, pp. 78-82.

 

Arid Zone Development: A Case of Limited Choices, in: Y. Mundlak & S.F. Singer (eds.),Arid Zone Development: Potentialities and Problems, Ballinger, Cambridge, Mass., 1977, pp.3-17

 

Geographical Aspects of National Planning in Israel: The Management of Limited Resources, Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 3, No.1 (1978), pp. 115-128.

 

Unconventional Agricultural Development in Arid Areas - the Negev of Israel, Stuttgarter Geographische Studien 93 (Festschrift fUr Wolfgang Meckelein), 1979, pp. 205-213.

 

The Underdeveloped Center of Jerusalem, Jerusalem's Business Center and the Outer Suburbs, Institute for Jerusalem Studies, Discussion Paper 2 (1980), p. 66.

 

The Outer Suburbs, ibid., pp. 61-63. Jerusalem's Urban Development, Middle East Review XIII (3-4) (1981), pp. 53-61

 

Geographical Changes in Israel since 1948, in: H. Shanks & B. Mazar (eds.), Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel, Washington-Jerusalem 1984, pp.187-194.

 

Arid Zone Development: An Appraisal Towards the End of the Twentieth Century, in: Y. Gradus (ed.), Desert Development: Man and Technology in Sparselands, Reidel, Dordrecht 1985, pp. 3­ 13.

 

Population Changes in Israel 1961-1972: A Geographic Analysis (with N.Z. Baer & S. Hasson), in: U.O. Schmelz & G. Nathan (eds.), Studies in the Population of Israel- in Honor of Roberto Bachi, Scripta Hierosolymitana 30 (1986), pp. 329-347.

The Development of Israeli Urbanism (with A.S. Shachar), in: M.P. Conzen (ed.), World Patterns of Modern Urban Change. Essays in Honor of Chauncy D. Harris, Univ. of Chicago, Dept. of Geogr., Res. Pap. 217-218,1986, pp. 153-174.

Land Transformation in Israel, in: M.G. Wolman & F.G.A. Fournier (eds.), Land Transformation  in Agriculture, London-New York, SCOPE 32, 1987, pp. 291-317.