Elishalom Yechiel (1952 – 2021) was a biochemist who was fascinated by the beauty and complexity of living systems. He especially enjoyed finding new ways to apply natural materials to medical problems. Eli worked with botanical materials to extract and explore their useful components, but he always wanted access to a wider variety of medicinal plants. He also wanted to examine living and complete plants, not just the disjoint fragments–fruits, seeds, leaves, barks, roots–that were commercially available.
With enough space and time, Eli hoped to grow a global collection of medicinal plants, examining specimens at different points in their lives and under different circumstances to learn how their useful properties developed and changed. He lived long enough to purchase the farmland we now call Eli’s Dream, but gastric cancer killed him before he could establish his medicinal plant collection there.
Eli had many more big ideas than he had time. He would say that all his unfinished projects meant his life, although not nearly long enough, was rich and busy and very good.
