He was educated at Berlin University and Giessen University in Germany. At the age of 23, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and in 1943 joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose original campus at Mount Scopus was an enclave in the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In 1952 he became Rector of the university and later its president for eight years from 1953 to 1961, following Selig Brodetsky and succeeded by Giulio Racah.[1]