Ruth Arnon

Ruth Arnon (born 1 June 1933) is an Israeli biochemist and immunologist who codeveloped the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone, and is the Paul Ehrlich Professor of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Born Ruth Rosenberg in Tel Aviv, she studied chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning her M.Sc. in 1955, and began her doctorate in 1957 under Michael Sela. She joined the Weizmann Institute in 1960 and held many posts there, including head of the Department of Chemical Immunology, dean of the Faculty of Biology, director of the MacArthur Center for Parasitology and vice president of the institute. With Michael Sela and the then doctoral student Devorah Teitelbaum she showed that a synthetic material made in the laboratory could suppress an animal model of multiple sclerosis, work that led after about thirty years to Copaxone, and she has also worked on vaccines against cancer and influenza. She chaired the sciences division of the Israel Academy of Sciences and was later elected its president.