Today marks the end of the shloshim period following the passing of Judith Abrahams. Although I spoke with her a few times over the years, I don’t think I ever met her personally, which is remarkable considering that we ran in similar circles: we lived in the same city for the last 29 years; we worked in the same field; we’re both native English speakers; and we had many acquaintances in common.
Judith Abrahams was born in Glasgow, the oldest of four children. She earned a PhD in biochemistry, and then in 1977 moved to Israel with her husband and several young children, following in the footsteps of her younger sister, who had come a few years earlier at age 18. In the late 1980’s, after the children were a bit older, she wanted to get back into the working outside of the house, but she didn’t enjoy the laboratory. Thus has been launched the career of many a patent attorney.
Things for patent practitioners in Israel were different then: most Israelis were still unfamiliar with the term “patent attorney”, and there were significantly fewer practitioners, so that nearly everyone in the field knew or knew of one another. Case in point: Judith trained with Yehuda Livneh at Biotechnology General, and after getting her license (no. 74; today we’re somewhere north of 500), replaced him as the in-house patent counsel there when he took a job a Teva, which was just beginning to become a global player.
Later in life, she got involved in an activity with a different bent: about 15 years ago she donated a kidney, and from that point on was active in promoting kidney donation.
יהי זכרה ברוך