Yehuda Elkana

Yehuda Elkana
Elkana in 2007
President and Rector of Central European University
In office 1999–2009
Preceded by	Josef Jarab
Succeeded by	John Shattuck
Personal details
Born	1934 Subotica, Yugoslavia
Died	21 September 2012 Jerusalem, Israel
Spouse(s)	Yehudit Elkana
Alma mater	Hebrew University, Brandeis University

Yehuda Elkana (Hebrew: יהודה אלקנה‎‎; 1934 – 21 September 2012) was a historian and philosopher of science, and a former President and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. He was married to Dr Yehudit Elkana and had four children.

Born as László Fröhlich to Hungarian-speaking Jewish parents in Yugoslavia, Elkana moved with his family to Szeged in 1944. That same year, Elkana and his parents were dispatched to Auschwitz. His family escaped the gas chambers when the Nazis transferred them to Austria as corvée labourers for the reconstruction of war-torn cities. In 1948, at the age of 14, he immigrated to Israel. He took up residence in Kibbutz HaZore'a, but health problems impeded Elkana from performing physical tasks. The kibbutz helped him acquire a scholarship to The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv. Soon after beginning his studies, Elkana decided he wished to be a philosopher and a historian of science. In 1955 he took up the study of mathematics and physics at the Hebrew University. He taught at Gymnasia Rehavia while undertaking his Master's degree, which meant that it took him 11 years to complete it. He then obtained a doctorate from Brandeis University with a thesis on On the Emergence of the Energy Concept in 1968, which formed the basis for his book, The discovery of the conservation of energy (1974). After receiving his Ph.D. he taught at Harvard University for a year. When he returned to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem he was named chairman of the department of the history and philosophy of science, becoming in the meantime Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in 1968, a post he held until 1993.

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