100 Years Ago…
On December 14, 1924, the first class at the Technion opened, with one female and 16 male students in its inaugural cohort
From these humble beginnings, the Technion grew steadily, and today it hosts approximately 15,000 students. With campuses in China and New York, around 575 faculty members, four Nobel Prize laureates, approximately 100,000 alumni, and as one of the world’s top 100 universities, the Technion is a globally renowned institution deeply committed to the State of Israel and impacting humanity.
The first class of architects – seated in the center: Zipporah Neufeld (the Technion’s first female student) alongside the legendary lecturer Prof. Alexander Baerwald. Courtesy of the Yehoshua Nessyahu Technion Historical Archive.
In the 100th cohort, there are approximately 2,100 undergraduate students, 48% of whom are women. This is a significant change compared to the first cohort, where women comprised less than 6%. The percentage of female deans and senior management has also increased over the past decade.
The Technion and its graduates are associated with a series of notable Israeli discoveries and inventions, including the invention of the disk-on-key (USB flash drive), the development of a miniature satellite launched in 1998, the creation of the international data compression standard (Lempel-Ziv), Azilect – a drug for Parkinson’s, the discovery of the protein degradation mechanism in cells, the discovery of quasicrystals, technology for manufacturing giant space lenses (in collaboration with NASA), DNA-based electronics, innovative diagnostic technologies, the Nano Bible, an exoskeleton that allows paralyzed individuals to walk, and the Iron Dome defense system, whose importance has been made indisputably clear in the past year.
Since the Technion opened its doors, a quarter of a century before the establishment of the State of Israel, national service has been a core component of its mission. Since the start of the Iron Swords War, the Technion and its graduates have rallied to support Israeli society. In the next 100 years, the Technion will continue to conduct groundbreaking research and train the next generation of engineers, scientists, doctors, architects, and educators who will secure the future of the State of Israel.