Dr. Nathan Shalem
(1897-1959)
Abstract
Dr Nathan Shalem was born in Saloniki, Greece and immigrated to Palestine in 1914. When the first World-war ended, he went to Florence, Italy where he completed his doctorate studies in Geology. For the next two decades he pursued his research in Geomorphology and Geography at various universities in Italy and Britain.
He returned to Palestine in 1925 taking up a position as a school teacher, while conducting physical and humanistic research projects. His interests which embraced a variety of fields were enriched by utilization of historical sources which he read in the original. In his ambition to be an “Israeli Geographer”, Shalem focused on local topics, exploring the country’s nature landscapes and the geographical settings of its Arab inhabitants. As early as the thirties and forties, Shalem’s research and publications focused on Israel’s geomorphology, establishing the foundations for the study of the seismological and geological structure of the Land of Israel.
Israeli academic institutions failed to acknowledge the significance of Nathan Shalem’s research for a number of reasons: 1. He tried to link the Humanistic with Natural Sciences (i.e. he delved into historical sources for evidence of geological and geomorphologic processes that occurred in Israel, thereby reconstructing a list of earthquakes beginning with the Bible period through the modern era). Lacking empirical field measurements, this work was rejected by academic geologists. 2. Because of the diversity of Shalem’s research interests, the academic decision-makers at the Hebrew University found it difficult to assign his work to a particular discipline (i.e. Geology, Geography or History), therefore passing him over when making faculty appointments to particular departments. 3. The Geography department at the Hebrew University had a strong preference for scholars trained in the German geographical school-of-thought, thus rejecting Shalem as an “outsider” when making faculty appointments – this despite his exceptional contributions to the field of geomorphology. 4. Another of Shalem’s “flaws” in the eyes of the university scholarly community was his long-held commitment to the popularization of geographical and geological knowledge. By publishing scientific articles in the daily press, he further alienated those who held the keys to his admission to the halls of the academy.
In the early fifties, after failing to overcome these academic appointment hurdles, Shalem joined the “Governmental Geological Institute” becoming head of the Department for Recent Geological periods and Geomorphologic research. His focus on the study of earthquakes and climatic changes within these periods, eventually led to the establishment of “The Geophysical Institute of Israel” – an institute dedicated to seismology research and applied studies of such natural resources as water and energy.