Research: Miracles at Rehovot

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Through exchanges of men and ideas, the Weizmann Institute has played an important role in Israel's small but determined foreign-aid program. Such activities may expand when Dr. Albert Sabin, the developer of oral polio vaccine, takes over as president next January. Israel, he told a 25th anniversary banquet in New York last month, is "a pilot plant for the hundreds of millions of people living in ever greater poverty and misery" around the world.

In only one important respect has the institute failed to "make miracles." Except for a few quiet, unpublicized contacts, it has been unable to arrange any cooperation with Arab scientists. As much in sadness as in fear, the institute is now building bomb shelters on its flower-filled campus. Yet like most Israelis, the institute's staff is unflaggingly optimistic. Not too many centuries ago, Arab and Jewish scholars kept scientific learning alive in the Middle Ages. Says Mathematician Gillis: "We look forward to the renewal of that cooperation."