* Posthume Thanks To Isadore Perlman *
It is a honour for me to remember the memory of Professor Isadore
Perlman, my teacher and colleague.
Although of small stature, Iz, as we called him, was first of
all a "mensch" with all its connotations. Iz was a giant in all
of the fields of his many specialities in the Natural Sciences,
but he became great in my eyes because of his integrity and
personality, his eagerness to be of help to students, his
astuteness in being able to connect dry analytical data with
intriguing archaeological problems, and his accurateness in
putting this evidence in writing, his adaptation
to new circumstances and his openness towards anything which
provided some challenge, and his insistence to teach people to
look for the core of a problem and to pursue that with
perseverance, and last, but not least, his wittyness.
I met Iz and his wife Lee in the summer of 1973 at the
Excavations of Tel Akko directed by Moshe Dothan. In the first
days of the dig, I knew him as a senior volunteer. He chose my
area to work in, because he was interested in the cut that I made
through the entire Tell reaching the kurkar-sand stone, and thus
obtaining an open book with pages filled with history of ancient
Akko. Iz was intrigued by history and asked many questions.
One afternoon at the sorting table of potery sherds, I was
talking to a student who had asked me about the significance of
the white inclusions in ancient pottery. I told him that
calcium-carbonate in clay usually decomposes when it is fired in
a kiln at 850 degrees Celsius. "No", said Iz, "that happens at
860 degrees and over a quite long period of time". I asked him
how he knew, and he answered that he was a chemist. At the end of
that dig, he invited me to join him at his new lab which was in
the process of being established at the new department of
Archaeometry at the Hebrew University.
In the early days, in 1973, Iz probably saw my bewildered eyes,
each time we had a conversation. Here was a man who talked about
emission of alpha particles whereby an element lowers itself two
places in the periodic system. I didn't know what emission was,
or what particle he was referring to, not to talk about the
periodic table. But Iz didn't wait for an invitation to explain
it, so he explained, and from that day on, he frequently visited
my office and initiated me into the mysteries of Science with the
intention to establish what he called a "Handshake between
Science and Humanities".
In those days we all learned to enter each others offices to
discuss equipment, project procedures, analytical data and
archaeological or geological problems, because Iz brought with
him "the" important feature from the legacy of the Lawrence
Berkeley laboratory i.e. a spirit of cooperation so needed in
research and so often lacking.
He knew what the delegation of power meant. The lab was not a
one-man-show. Iz used to bestow on us a certain responsibility
and when the day of discussions arrived, he not only gave us the
possibility to explain one's case at ease (without interruptions)
but he also directed us through every necessary step in order to
obtain the utmost information needed to solve a problem, and to
couple that with all knowledge that stood at his disposal.
Moreover, he was a great teacher. The stuff was difficult but
extremely rewarding. He was one of these lucky men who are able
to convey to students an expert opinion with its own difficult
nomenclature, into a concept that was easily understandable, also
to the layman.
At the same time that I was wrestling with the laboratory
procedures, Iz learned archaeology, with the difference that it
didn't take him that much time. After that, we had many
conversations of how to tackle one of the largest mysteries in
archaeology: The origin of pottery.
With Iz around, one didn't need to explain archaeological
problems twice, and very soon, he understood the questions which
daily pester archaeologists, and he knew on the spot whether
archaeometry would be able to give some positive answers to the
archaeologists and geologists.
It was a pleasure to work for him and later with him,
especially during the writing of our joint papers. When Iz wrote
a final sentence, one could be sure that every word was checked.
He always consulted Webster's Dictionnary, however well he
mastered the English language. When needed, even the final text
was altered. He was the kind of man that had little or no
problems with his ego.
Iz's integrity was beyond doubt. He checked and re-checked
daily the neutron activation spectra one by one, and after that
the data print-outs and taught us to check analytical data
frequently and with many colleagues, because "The more accurate
the data, the surer the provenience determination".
It has been an honour to work with Iz. Each paper brought some
deeper insight into what was a large question mark before. New
questions came up every day, and the latter is exactly what
research is all about: One answers a single question to be able
to ask new questions. This part of his work will live on in the
publications which come out of our laboratory work. I miss him
tremendously in our conversations and in his ability to shed new
light on problems where there didn't seem to be any light.
With Iz no longer with us, a pioneer has gone, but his work
lives on in our work. Anyone who sees a publication from our
laboratory will recognize Iz's fingerprint.
However, large amounts of information could not be interpreted
automatically and for this Iz had a witty remark.
He said, and I quote, "At least, we have many an answer in
search of a question". May his soul rest in peace.
Isadore Perlman, blessed be his memory
Copyright, Gunneweg, Jerusalem, 1998
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