http://israel21c.org/people/still-inventing-after-all-these-years
‘This country saved my life,’ says 91-year-old microbiologist Nathan Citri. In return, he is saving others with Israeli medical ingenuity.At 91, Prof. Nathan Citri offers no advice on how to achieve longevity. That he’s made it this far — with a mind so sharp he is still inventing innovative medical diagnostic kits — may be thanks to long walks or good genes.
He cannot know for sure, since the Nazis cut short the lives of his parents and his only sister.
“This country saved my life,” says Citri. In return, he continues to give Israel the best of his extraordinary knowledge in microbiology.
Born Natan Cytrynowski in Lodz, Poland, the future Hebrew University researcher was raised in a Hebrew-speaking home by Zionist educators.
“How many people spoke Hebrew at home in those days? Nobody else I know of,” he tells ISRAEL21c with a laugh. He vividly recalls visitors marveling that the Cytrynowski kids not only conversed in Hebrew but even cried out in Hebrew when they were upset. “I always say that my mother tongue is Hebrew even though my mother never made it to Israel.”