Jacob van der Hoeden

Jacob 'Jaap' van der Hoeden יעקב ואן דר הודן‎, (27 July 1891, Utrecht –1 February 1968, Ramat Chen) was a Dutch and Israeli veterinary research scientist.

Biography

Van der Hoeden was born into a Jewish family in the Netherlands in 1891. Having earned his doctorate in 1921, he served from 1924 to 1929 as a senior researcher at the Dutch national public health institute and a professor of veterinary medicine at Utrecht University. In 1929, he was appointed to head the University's hospital laboratories and, in 1932, was elected to the Dutch Society for Natural Sciences. He became a leading authority on diseases that pass from animals to humans.

Van der Hoeden, together with his four children, survived the Holocaust thanks to the help of Dutch Christians who hid the family in various places. However, his wife died of illness prior to the end of World War II.

In 1948, the Minister of Agriculture in the interim government of the State of Israel invited Professor van der Hoeden to establish the Veterinary Institute in Israel. He served in this institute until 1955, when he moved to the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona, where he worked until his retirement in 1966. Van der Hoeden died in 1968 in Israel.

Awards and honours

• In 1961, van der Hoeden was awarded the Israel Prize, in agriculture.
• In 1961, he was awarded the Zimmerman Prize.