Itongadol.- Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Arieh Warshel Wednesday to congratulate him on winning the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
"Mazal Tov," Netanyahu said to the Israeli-born Warshel who is now a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "You are doing great things. It is exceptionally impressive, and we are proud of you, proud of people who were at the Technion and the Weizmann Institute, and advanced those places. I will be happy to meet you when you come to Israel."
Netanyahu asked Warshel to explain to him the research that won him the prize, and the Nobel laureate said the research that won him the award was conducted during his years in Israel.
Warshel won the prize along with two other Jewish professors, South African born Michael Levitt and Vienna-born Martin Karplus.
Levitt also holds Israeli citizenship, and taught at the Weizmann Institute from 1980 to 1987.
Netanyahu has made it a practice to phone Israelis and congratulate them for distinguished feats on the world stage. For instance, he also phoned Israel\’s last Nobel laureate, Dan Shechtman, when he won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011. But it is not only scientists, or first-place winners, that he calls.
Last year Netanyahu called 13-year-old Yishai Oliel who won a prestigious international tennis championship for juniors, And he also called Boris Gelfand, when he just barely lost the 2012 Chess World Championship to India\’s Viswanathan Anand.
397