Arieh Warshel

Arieh Warshel (Hebrew: אריה ורשל) is an Israeli-American biophysical chemist and computational biologist best known for developing multiscale computational models that simulate complex chemical processes in biological systems, earning him the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Martin Karplus and Michael Levitt.

Born on November 20, 1940, in Kibbutz Sde Nahum in the British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel), Warshel grew up in a kibbutz environment before pursuing higher education in chemistry and physics. He obtained his B.Sc. from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa in 1966, followed by an M.Sc. in 1967 and a Ph.D. in chemical physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot in 1969. After completing his doctorate under the supervision of theoretician Shneior Lifson, Warshel conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University with Martin Karplus, where he began exploring computational approaches to chemical reactions. He then returned to the Weizmann Institute as a senior scientist and later worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, before joining the University of Southern California (USC) in 1976.

Arieh Warshel was born on November 20, 1940, in Kibbutz Sde Nahum in the Beit She'an Valley of Mandatory Palestine to a Jewish family. His parents were Zvi and Rachel Warshel, and he grew up alongside three brothers: Yigal, Abraham, and Benjamin.