Born in Wloclawek, Poland on Feb. 1, 1919 to Moshe and Sara Rubin, Yaakov Rubin immigrated to the United States before the war in 1939 to attend the University of California. His parents and most of his extended family were killed in the Holocaust. He was a leader in the Zionist youth movement, Hashomer Hatza'ir -- both in Poland and, in the 1940s, in San Francisco. A veteran of the U.S. Army during World War II, he received his PhD from UC Berkeley in soil physics. Jacob Rubin and family made aliyah to Israel in 1949. He worked at the Agricultural Research Center in Rehovot and taught at the Technion and the Hebrew University. As Chair of the Irrigation and Soil Physics Division, and as Director of the Institute of Soils and Water, he led research to develop sustainable arid-land agriculture in the growing nation. Returning to the U.S. in 1961, he became a chief scientist in the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, and joined the Stanford University faculty as a consulting professor. He attained the highest scientific rank achievable in civil service and received the U.S. Department of the Interior's highest award for public service. He was known as a pioneer of water infiltration theory, and was most proud of his work in founding the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program. Jacob's passion for creative thinking, mentoring and addressing national needs through the combination of applied and basic research inspired colleagues, students and policy leaders throughout the course of his productive, 45-year career. His insistent intellect was tempered and guided by a remarkable brand of optimistic humanism. [From obituary in JWeekly.com, 12/21/2007].
From the description of Jacob Rubin papers, undated. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 754866067
