In Memoriam - Frank Herzl Herbstein 1926 - 2011

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In Memorian
Frank Herzl Herbstein
1926 – 2011
Professor Frank Herzl Herbstein passed away on the 22nd of March, 2011, in Haifa.  He is survived by his 2nd wife Any Michel, his daughters Ruth and Judy Herbstein, his grandchildren Yael and Adam (Kaufman), Liran and Shiraz (Attar),  his sister Nina Selbst and brothers David and Moritz (Manu) Herbstein.

 
Frank was born in July 1926 in the Oranjezicht suburb of  Cape Town, almost  at the end of the road leading up the slopes of Table Mountain, with a magnificent view of Signal Hill and the harbour below.  His parents, Betty (nee Policansky) and Joseph Herbstein, had called the house in which he was born, Tel Chai.  This, and his middle name, Herzl,  proclaimed their commitment to the Zionist cause,  which was to be a major influence in his life.  Two more children followed, Nina born in 1928 and David in 1932.  In search of more commodious accommodation, the family moved across the Peninsula, briefly to St. James and then to Muizenberg.  Moritz Isaac, known to all as Manu, born in 1936, completed the family.
Frank spent most of his childhood and his adolescent years in Muizenberg.  He described the experience as being like growing up in Paradise.
He started and finished his schooling at the local co-educational school. As was the practice at the time with gifted children, he was skipped from class to class and finished high school at the age of fifteen and a half, much younger than most of his classmates.  He matriculated with five distinctions and was listed sixth in the Cape Province.  Without a C in Afrikaans he would have done even better. 
For the Jewish children studies didn't end with the school day.  They attended Talmud Torah four afternoons a week. It was Frank's good fortune that Moshe Natas came to head the 'cheder' in the late 1930s.  He was an outstanding scholar, hiding behind the visage of a typical  'melamed'.  He brought Hebrew to life, insisting on the use of the Sephardi pronunciation, as the language of the renascent Yishuv, rather than simply as the language of prayer, required for the coming of age bar mitzvah ceremony.  He also taught his young students Jewish history and culture in the context of the wider European experience. Thus for Frank  'going to cheder', instead of being a burdensome intrusion on leisure time was converted into a stimulating intellectual activity. 
Another important influence on all the Muizenberg boys was the Boy Scouts, to which all, almost without exception, belonged.  Although this was a movement born of the British Empire, the Jewish community managed to put its own stamp on it.   The local troop was known as the 2nd Muizenberg (Jewish).  In a memoir Frank described what the scouting experience had meant to him:
"Looking back, scouting was a marvellous activity; it consolidated us into a group, we accepted a discipline in the framework of group activities, we made friends who lasted for a lifetime, we trained ourselves to do our best at whatever tasks were set before us, we were patriotic and collected old newspapers and bottles for the war effort, most of all we were introduced to the pleasures of the out-of-doors, in the wonderful surroundings and climate of the Cape Peninsula".
A further building block in the weltanschauung of Frank and his contemporaries was the study circle run by his father, stretching through the years of his adolescence.  The topics dealt with covered the whole of Jewish experience from the time of the Enlightenment on.  While discussion ranged freely, over the many and varied ways in which Jews had attempted to cope with the modern world, not surprisingly most of the participants emerged from the experience with a firmly Zionist outlook.  Certainly this was true of Frank.
From school, on his father's insistence that he was still too young to go to University, Frank went on to work for a year at the Low Temperature Research Laboratories. Then in 1943 he began to study Industrial Chemistry at the University of Cape Town, having decided that neither of the two choices popular at the time among his contemporaries - medicine and law - were for him. In July 1944, on turning eighteen he interrupted his studies to enlist in the Army, though no conscription obliged him to do so.  Friends a little older than him saw combat 'up North' in the campaign against Rommel and in Italy, but he did not serve beyond the borders of South Africa.  In 1946 he was back at University, having changed his course of study to Physics and Chemistry.  He went on to complete his MSc at UCT in 1947.  Then came another war to interrupt his studies once again.  He joined Machal and in May 1948 arrived in Rehovot  and was sent to serve in Chemed, the army's nascent scientific corps. 
The war was over by the end of 1948 and Frank began his doctoral studies at the newly formed Weizmann Institute and was awarded his PhD degree by the Hebrew University.
In 1952, back in South Africa, he married Jessica Corinne Liebson. They spent the next years in the USA, where he was a post-doctoral fellow at MIT.  In 1956 they returned to South Africa, where their two daughters, Ruth and Judy, were born.  In 1965, they came on aliyah and settled in Haifa.   Frank was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Technion. Jessica pursued her career as a psychologist and the girls studied at the Reali School. Twenty years later, after the girls had finished high school and left home to continue their studies elsewhere, Frank and Jessica divorced. Jessica passed away in 1994.
The Technion remained Frank’s academic home for the rest of his life.   He was a devoted teacher and mentored generations of future scientists, some of whom later joined him as members of the Technion faculty.
He rose to international prominence as a researcher in the field of X-ray Crystallography. The pinnacle of his scientific career came with the publication of a massive 2-volume monograph entitled  "Crystalline Molecular Complexes and Compounds", described in reviews as 'an invaluable resource'.      Among the honours bestowed on him over theyears were a D.Sc from the University of Cape Town, membership, as a Foreign Associate, of the Royal Society of South Africa and finally, in 2007, the award that he valued most highly because it was an acknowledgement of merit  by his colleagues, the Fankuchen  Award of the American Crystallographic Association.

In addition to his scientific work and teaching, Frank made a significant contribution to the academic administration of the Technion. Over the years he fulfilled a variety of functions, among them Dean of the Department of Chemistry, Dean of the Graduate School and Vice- President  for Development. These activities were a source of great satisfaction to him. At his 80th birthday celebration he said "I have thoroughly enjoyed what I have done over the last 60 years, and especially the period of forty years at the Technion – since 1965.  Looking back, one of the highlights was surely my two and a half years as Vice-President for Development…Being a senior executive in a big organization has its rewards – the sense of achievement in being able to do new things and bring about new developments…"

In 1986   he married Any Michel. For twenty five years, until his death,  they shared a happy and fulfilling relationship. At his 80th birthday celebration he shared with his family and friends his appreciation of her: "Without Any, and her role as combined wife, medical advisor, guard and policewoman, I would not be here today…..We have a lasting relationship based on mutual affection and appreciation." 
Frank was a man of many parts - devoted to his family, loyal to his friends of whom the closest dated back to his childhood years, committed to his scientific research which he continued for sixteen years after his official retirement, and to his colleagues and students. He was scrupulously honest and modest to a fault, wearing his considerable gifts lightly and always available to offer support and encouragement.
His daughters chose the following inscription for his tombstone:
איש מדע, ישר דרך
אהוב על הבריות
ולנו - סלע איתן

He is sorely missed.