ISRAEL JOURNAL OF , Vol 21, 1972, pp. 131-134

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF MIGRATION

HEINZ STEINITZ: TO REALIZE A DREAM

EUGENIE CLARK Department of Zoology, University of Maryland and

WILLIAM ARON National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, D.C.

On August 20, 1968, Heinz Steinitz, as Founding Director, addressed a large and distinguished al1dience at the official opening of the Marine Biological Laboratory of the Heb.-ew University in Elat on the . Those of us privileged to attend the ceremonies were deeply moved by the tribute Heinz paid to his father and the extra­ ordinary father-son combination that brought about the materialization of this critically situated laboratory. Heinz was our colleague, one of our dearest friends and an inspiration to us as he was to so many others who came to know him. While the authors of this article did not know his father, Walter Steinitz, personally, the laboratory at Elat was Walter's dream, a dream brought to reality largely through the efforts of his son. The strong impact of Walter Steinitz on his son makes it essential to review something of his life in order to best understand and offer homage to Heinz Steinitz. Walter Steinitz was born in Wroclaw (then Breslav), Germany on February 12, 1882 and lived a full life until he was eighty-one years old. He inspired his three sons to go into the field of science: Ernst into medicine, Heinz into medicine and zoology, Gideon into meteorology. Directly and indirectly he inspired grandchildren into the fields of astrophysics, geology and botany. Walter Steinitz received his medical degree in Germany in 1905 and earned his living as a heart specialist. His research interests, which began with the anatomy of nerves and muscles in various mammals, fmally focused on the field of aquatic zoology. In 1918 he received a Ph.D. in Breslau. His thesis concerned development of the eye in the humpback whale. In 1919 Walter Steinitz was the first to propose the establishment of a marine biological research station on the coast of . No station existed in the Mediterranean east of the Adriatic. He published an urgent proposal with detailed plans based on the model of the zoological stations at Naples and Rovinj. In 1924 and 1925 he made journeys to Palestine to start a survey of the local marine fauna and to select a suitable site for a future marine station. In the 1920's and 1930's he published a series of papers on Palestinian and Syrian marine animals. He

131 132 E. CLARK AND W. ARON Isr. J. Zool., described new species of fishes and shrimps and made the first listing and compre­ hensive research on the coastal forms, which included 65 species of fishes and 25 species of decapods. He noted that 15 of these were of Indo-Pacific origin. He dealt with this subject in an extensive paper published in 1929. Walter Steinitz continued to urge the establishment of a marine biological station in Palestine, pointing out the great advantage of being in a locality next to the Suez Canal where studies could determine the importance of this Canal as a means for the dispersal of species between two oceans. In March 1933 Walter Steinitz immigrated to Palestine with his family. He continued his research in a small laboratory of the Zebulun Seafaring Society in northern Tel Aviv. In his efforts to start a center for studies on the faunal effects of the Suez Canal, he was encouraged by such eminent scientists as Albert Einstein and by groups such as the Tel Aviv Society of Natural Sciences. In 1938 he went to London to see Lord Rothschild (himself an eminent zoologist in the field of entomology) and obtained help for the establishment of a marine biological station in Haifa Bay which, with the additional financial help of a group of Nahariyya settlers, was built in 1939. Walter Steinitz thus had a start for the research establishment he had been urging for 20 years. While this station was still in its infancy, the Second World War broke out and financial help halted. This finished his attempts to realize his dream of a marine biological station. Walter Steinitz passed on his zest for study to all his sons. His special interests in the eyes of vertebrates, zoogeography and life histories of Palestinian coastal and fresh water animals, the immigration of biota through the Suez Canal, and his dream for a marine biological laboratory -these interests he passed on to one son in particular. Although Walter Steinitz did not live to see the fulfilment of his dream of a marine biological laboratory in Israel devoted to basic research of coastal waters and the influence of the Suez Canal, he must have realized that the foundation for this was laid in his work and publications and the inspirations he had given his son, Heinz. Heinz Steinitz was born on April 26, 1909. He received his basic education in a classics-oriented secondary school in Breslau. Like his father, he first studied medicine. By 1933 his attention turned towards zoology, and in particular, as he followed in his father's footsteps. With the worsening political situation, Heinz Steinitz left Germany and settled with his wife in Palestine. For the first few years he worked under Professor F.S. Boden­ heimer on citrus pests. In 1936 he joined the Department of Zoology at the Hebrew University of and in 1938, received a Ph.D. in zoology, the first to be granted by the Hebrew University in this field. During 1951 - 53 he worked as a research fellow in Dr. L. Stone's laboratory at the Medical School at , studying the lens and retina regeneration of the newt. His admiration for his father shows in his earliest papers on fishes. In his "Contributions to the knowledge of the Blenniidae of the eastern Mediterranean, Part I", he starts by telling how "the fish fauna of Palestine became the subject of a special paper for the first time in 1927 when W. Steinitz published his 'Contributions to the knowledge of the coastal fauna of Palestine'", when his father reported 65 species of