Jacob Bear is a Professor Emeritus at the Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, where, for many years, he held the Albert and Anne Mansfield Chair in Water Resources. He received his B.Sc., P.E., and M.Sc. degrees from the Technion, and his Ph.D. degree from the Univ. of California at Berkeley (1960). He was the first recipient (1977) of the Birdsall Distinguished Lecturer in Hydrogeology, awarded by the Geological Society of America, Hydrogeological Div., Washington, D.C. He was awarded Honorary Doctorates in Technological Sciences both by the Delft Univ. of Technology, The Netherlands (1978), and by E.T.H., Zurich, Switzerland (1988). He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and was awarded the 1990 K. Hubbert Award by the National Ground Water Association (USA). He was awarded the Rothschild Prize in Engineering (Israel) in 1998 and the Excellence in Education Medal by the American Geophysical Union(AGU) in 2003. He was elected Boussinesq Lecturer for 2006 by the Boussinesq Center for Hydrology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2009, he was the first to be awarded honorary lifetime membership by INTERPORE—The International Society for Porous medium. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) awarded him The Horton medal for 2010, for his contributions to hydrology. In 2014 he was awarded honorary lifetime membership of the Israel Association for Water Resources.
He joined the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Technion – Israel Inst. of Technology in 1960, and was promoted to professor in 1970 and has served as deputy vice president (1970-1972), vice president for academic affairs (1972-1976), dean of the Graduate School (1984-1986). He was the first director of the S. Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology (1978-1982), and dean of Civil Engineering (1995-1997). In 2003 he founded the School of Engineering at the Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee,Zemach, Israel, and served as its first dean until 2014. His teaching, research, and consulting cover the areas of groundwater hydrology and hydraulics, management of water resources, subsurface contamination and remediation, and the general theory of transport phenomena in porous media. Since 2008, he has been conducting research on CO2 sequestration in deep geological formations within the framework of the European Community. He was a consultant on groundwater hydrology and management, policy and development of water resources to the Hydrological Service Water Commission, Ministry of Agriculture, (1960-1987), to Water Planning for Israel Ltd. (TAHAL) (1960-1989), to Sandia National Laboratory, to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1990-2010), and to private companies in Israel and abroad. His work has been summarized in over 200 papers in scientific journals, research reports, and books. He authored six well-known books, used by students and practitioners around the globe.
