Uzia Galil, a founding father of Israel’s tech industry, dies aged 96

By Shoshanna Solomon

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10 June 2021, 3:58 pm

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Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter

Uzia Galil, one of the founding fathers of Israel’s tech ecosystem, dies at the age of 96.

Galil, who received the Israel Prize, the nation’s highest accolade in 1997 for his development of the tech industry, was a founder of Elron Electronic Industries, the first high-tech multinational holding company based in Israel, in Tel Aviv, and operating globally.

Since 1962 the firm has helped set up, fund and develop some 30 technology-based companies in a variety of fields, including medical imaging, defense electronics, communications, machine vision and semiconductors, and enabling the flourishing of the local tech industry.

Galil served as CEO of Elron for 38 years until 1999 and was the chairman or director of most of the companies founded by Elron. Prior to founding Elron, Galil was the head of the Electronic Department of the Faculty of Physics at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (1957-1962). He was also the head of electronic research in the Israeli Navy (1954-57), where he did his army service, and worked in R&D for Motorola in Chicago (1953-54).