Amherst, MA – Haim Bernard Gunner was born in Ottawa, Canada on June 18, 1924 and died in Amherst, Massachusetts on April 27, 2026. He was two months shy of 102.
The child of Orthodox Jewish immigrants who fled the pogroms in Ukraine, Haim’s early life was organized around the creation of a Jewish homeland. At the age of 11, he joined Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement dedicated to the development of farm-based communities in Palestine. Though recognized as a gifted student of history and literature, he decided to study agriculture to realize this vision.
Haim graduated from Lisgar Collegiate Institute in 1941 and went on to earn his BSA in bacteriology at Ontario Agricultural College in 1946 where he was awarded The Governor General’s Medal for highest academic performance and the Guelph Medal for excellence in physics, chemistry, and literature. In 1948, he earned his MSc in soil microbiology at the University of Manitoba.
In 1949, in the shadow of the holocaust, Haim immigrated to the newly established State of Israel where he helped to found Kibbutz Sasa, a collective settlement in the hills of Galilee. There he served as Head of Field Crops, Head of Soil Conservation, and Farm Manager. In 1951, he married Yaffa Benet, and one year later their daughter Naomi was born.
In 1955, Haim, Yaffa, and Naomi left the kibbutz, now a thriving center of fruit production, as Yaffa was unhappy with their child rearing practices. They moved to Jerusalem where Haim became Coordinator of Agricultural and Biological Research at the National Research Council of Israel and established the UNESCO funded Regional Center for Arid Zone Research in Beer Sheba.
Two years later, in 1957, Haim entered the doctoral program at Cornell University where he performed groundbreaking research on the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, then devastating the banana groves of Guatemala. His dissertation demonstrated for the first time that fungi could grow in the absence of oxygen. In 1959, his son Raphael was born.
Haim completed his doctorate in 1961 and proceeded to do a post-doc at the Canada Department of Agriculture where he pioneered new areas of research on nitrate production. In 1963, he was appointed Professor of Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he was instrumental in establishing the Department of Environmental Sciences – a response to the dawning awareness of the impact of pollution. In 1966, Haim published an article in Nature exposing the devastating impact of the insecticide Diazinon. This research led to the biological control of pest insects and of plant pathogens – a radical new way to preserve crops ecologically.
Haim and Yaffa also joined the Jewish Community of Amherst where Haim often officiated until a full-time Rabbi was hired — even though he was an avowed atheist and looked to science to explain life’s mysteries. In 1972, he helped to found the Yiddish Book Exchange, later renamed the Yiddish Book Center, now the premier institution for the preservation of Yiddish literature and culture. In 1977, he and Yaffa traveled to the Soviet Union where they met with Jews persecuted for applying for visas to move to Israel. In meeting with these “Refuseniks,” they bravely put their lives at risk, committed to the belief “that Jewish life anywhere depends on Jewish solidarity everywhere.”
In 1982 Haim founded his first biotech firm EcoScience, based on a fungal treatment for the control of roaches, which eventually went public and was listed on the NASDAQ Exchange. After the sale of EcoScience, Haim went on to found EcoOrganics, a company focused on the development of soy-based fertilizers. Haim completed his career as Chief Scientist for the Performance Nutrition Division of LidoChem, Inc., a company devoted to nutritional and disease control products for agriculture. There he took an Ecosystems Management Approach to crop production in which every element of the environment is taken into account. Haim regarded this as his most important contribution to science.
Reflecting on his life at his 100th birthday celebration, Haim shared the six principles he had come to value most: to be kind, to be helpful, to be generous, to be honest, to be loving, and to communicate. Haim was the living embodiment of these principles and will greatly be missed by his family and friends. He is survived by his daughter Naomi Burns, her husband Brian Burns, their daughter Shira Burns, her partner Rohit Ramanathan, his son Raphael Gunner, his brother Sol Gunner, and his brother’s wife Estelle Gunner.
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