Dan Hardy Yaalon (Hebrew: דן הארדי יעלון; May 11, 1924, Uherské Hradiště, Czechoslovakia – January 29, 2014, Mevasseret Zion, Israel) was an Israeli pedologist and soil scientist, who contributed to the fields of arid and Mediterranean pedology and paleopedology, as well as the history, sociology, and philosophy of soil science. Through a research career spanning over six decades (1950–2014), Yaalon was an active member of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) and the International Soil Science Society (ISSS; later the International Union of Soil Sciences; IUSS). He was awarded the Sarton Medal for his contribution to the history of science, and the Dokuchaev Award.
Early life and education
Dan Hardy Yaalon was born as Hardy Berger on May 11, 1924, in Uherske Hradiste, Czechoslovakia (modern day Czech Republic) to a middle-class Jewish family involved in the textile business. He was the youngest child of Hugo J. Berger and Elsa Jellinek, and had two older sisters, Dita and Stella. Yaalon was a curious child and a high-achieving pupil, who showed an early interest in exploring his environment. Typical for his family background, Yaalon was part of the Maccabi youth movement, an international Zionist movement aimed at motivating Jewish youth to immigrate to "Eretz Israel". Yaalon's comfortable childhood was disrupted at the age of 10 by the death of his father.
The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia five years later in 1939 further fragmented the family. Yaalon's mother encouraged him to leave the country to escape the escalating Anti-Jewish measures. In March 1939, Yaalon left Uherske Hradiste for the Youth Aliyah School in Prague, a Jewish Youth Immigration School, where he was a student for three months. During that time, Yaalon was offered an internship at the Zionist agricultural training program in Denmark, as a preparatory step for emigrating to Israel. Yaalon left Czechoslovakia and travelled by train via Germany to Denmark, after which he never saw his mother again. In September 1943, after a long period of hiding and struggling to feed himself, he began academic studies at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen. Two months later, Denmark was also occupied by the Nazis, and Yaalon escaped to Sweden.
Upon arrival in Sweden, Yaalon immediately requested admission to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at Uppsala. There he met the prominent Swedish soil chemist Sante Emil Mattson (1886-1980), who appointed Yaalon as his assistant. At that time, Yaalon made his first soil-profile observation. In 1944 Yaalon returned to Czechoslovakia and volunteered in the Czech Army, unaware that his family had been killed in The Holocaust. After the war, Yaalon discovered that his mother had been sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, where she was killed. Yaalon left Czechoslovakia and returned to Denmark to resume his studies, completing a B.Sc. in Agricultural Sciences (Soil Chemistry) in July 1947.
Move to Israel
In July 1948, after a long and complex journey from Europe to the Levant, Yaalon reached the newly formed state of Israel. In 1949, he joined the recently established Israel Defense Forces (IDF), serving a year in the Scientific Service Corps ("Hemed"). Around that period, Yaalon changed his first name from Hardy to Dan, and was registered as "Lieutenant Dan Berger". During his IDF service, Yaalon participated in the first geological field surveys of the Negev desert, whose hyperarid climate and rugged terrain with reg and loessial soils was completely alien to Yaalon, and became a key area of interest throughout his later career. After demobilization from the IDF, Yaalon found employment as a schoolteacher of chemistry and agriculture in Beit Yerach school, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee.