Michaelson, Isaac Chesar

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MICHAELSON, ISAAC CHESAR

MICHAELSON, ISAAC CHESAR (1903–1982), Israeli ophthalmologist. Born in Scotland, he taught at Glasgow University and served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War ii. During Israel's War of Independence in 1948, he was specialist adviser to the Israel government and from 1953 served as professor of ophthalmology at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. He set up eye clinics in Liberia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Rwanda and trained local doctors and medical assistants to run them. The Ophthalmology Research Laboratories administered by Michaelson and his colleagues from Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem served an estimated patient-population of 20 million in Africa.

A specialist on the diseases of the inner eye, Michaelson is the author of Circulation of the Inner Eye in Man and Animals (1952) and, with Ballantyne, of Textbook of Diseases of the Eye (19702). Michaelson was awarded the 1960 Israel Prize for medicine.

[Lucien Harris]

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