Efraim Lev (born 1958 in Israel) is a professor in the Department of Israel Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Haifa.[1] He is the immediate past Head of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research of the Cairo Genizah at the University of Haifa,[2] and the Department of Humanities and Arts at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He also headed the Eshkol Department of Multi-Disciplinary Studies for special programs and undergraduate degrees in the University of Haifa’s Faculty of Humanities (2013-2018). Lev specializes in the history of medicine and pharmacology in the Middle East, in particular from the Middle Ages and the early modern period.
Prof. Lev began his studies at Bar-Ilan University in the Department of Land of Israel Studies and the Department of Life Sciences, and in 1987 he graduated with a bachelor's degree. He later completed advanced degrees at Bar-Ilan (M.Sc. in Biology and a PhD in Land of Israel studies). He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine at University College London, under the guidance of Prof. Roy Porter. Since 1999, Lev has been a lecturer at the University of Haifa. He served as a research fellow and spent long periods doing research at several institutions in Israel and abroad, such as the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit of Cambridge University Library in England. Over the course of his career, Lev has won several prestigious awards and research scholarships, including the 2003 Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality Moshe Einhorn Prize for his book Medicinal Substances of the Medieval Levant and the Overseas Visiting Scholarship from St. John's College at the University of Cambridge. In 2013, he won the prestigious George Urdang Medal for pharmaco-historical writing.[3] In 2017, he was awarded a medal and membership from the International Academy of the History of Pharmacy.
Lev's research first focused on archaeobotany. As part of this area of study, he researched the dietary remains of Neanderthal man in Kebara Cave on Mount Carmel dating back nearly 47,000-60,000 years ago. The variety of plant species discovered indicates the human vegetal diet of the period, which included primarily the eating of various types of legumes. In his later research, Lev specialized in the history of medicine and pharmacology in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Lev’s dual expertise in history and biology has allowed him to explore topics that are rarely researched together.
Medical Materials and Their Use During the Medieval Era in Israel and Syria, 1998, (365 pages), Hebrew, Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University. Supervisors: Dr. Joseph Drori and Prof. Eran Dolev.