Gideon Mer

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Gideon Mer with assistant, 1955

Gideon Mer's house in Rosh Pina

Gideon Mer (1894 - 22 March 1961) was an Israeli physician and scientist whose work was moslty concerned with the eradication of malaria.

Gideon Mer was born in Lithuania, then part of Imperial Russia. He studied medicine in Russia and France where he also graduated.

Settling in Palestine in 1914, he devoted himself to the control of malaria in connection with the Jewish settlement programme. During the First World War he was a medical officer in the Jewish Legion, a unit within the British Army, and served at Gallipoli, in Palestine, Syria, and Turkey. After the war he returned to Rosh Pina, a Jewish settlement in the north of Palestine, and his laboratory there eventually became a research station for the study of the bionomics of mosquitoes and methods of malaria control. With the opening of the Hebrew University he joined the Department of Preventive Medicine.

During the Second World War Mer served in the British Forces with the rank of colonel and was malaria adviser to Middle East Command. {{Note: he is the unnamed Officer during World War II in charge of anti-Malaria program mentioned in Martin Sugarman's article on the Zion Mule Corps}. After the war he joined the staff of the new school of medicine and became chief malaria adviser to the Ministry of Health in Israel, of which he was acting director in 1956 and 1957. As malaria was brought under control Professor Mer investigated the control of other insects, particularly the horse-fly, and the Rosh Pina research station undertook the testing of insecticides and the training of scientists.