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Jan. 31, 2021
The personal story of Jacob Ziv, 89, is woven into the fabric of Israeli high-tech’s history. You’ve probably never heard of him, but you have certainly used technology based on his mathematical inventions - most famously lossless compression of data which enables us to use files like PDF, GIF, MP3 and countless others.
Ziv was one of the first Israeli scientists who completed their doctoral studies abroad and returned to teach at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. He introduced the use of transistors at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, headed the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education and served as president of the National Academy of Sciences. He did his military reserve service in the special operations department of Military Intelligence (today s Unit 81) and he even managed to found a startup together with the veteran tech entrepreneur and investor Joseph Yossi Vardi.