Jacob Bear is a Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Civil Engineering of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, where 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). All degrees are in Civil Engineering.
He joined the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Technion–Israel Inst. of Technology in 1960, and was promoted to professorship in 1970. At the Technion, he served as Deputy Vice President (1970-1972), Vice President for Academic Affairs (1972-1976), Dean of Graduate School (1984-1986), 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, Prof. Jacob Bear founded a new School of Engineering at the Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Zemach, Israel, and served as its Dean until October 2014.
His work has been summarized in over 190 papers in scientific journals, research reports, and books. His well known books are used by students, researchers, and practitioners all over the world:
- Bear, J., Zaslavsky, D. and S. Irmay. Physical Principles of Water Percolation and Seepage, UNESCO, 1968. Translated into Russian.
- Bear, J. Dynamics of Fluids in Porous Media, American Elsevier, 1972. Also reissued by Dover publication, 1988. Translated into Chinese.
- Bear, J. Hydraulics of Groundwater, McGraw Hill, 1979. Translated into Chinese. Also reissued by Dover publication, 2007.
- Bear, J. and A. Verruijt. Modeling Groundwater Flow and Pollution, Kluwer Academic Publ., 1987
- Bear, J. and Y. Bachmat. Introduction to Modeling Transport Phenomena in Porous Media, Kluwer Acad. Publ., 1990.
- Bear, J. and A. Cheng, Modeling Groundwater Flow and Contaminant Transoprt, Springer, 2010.
- Bear, J. Modeling Flow and Transport in Porous Media, Springer, 2018.
In 1987 he established the International Journal Transport in Porous Media and served as its Chief Editor, until 2012.
Prof. Bear has been serving as Visiting Professor on sabbatical leaves at M.I.T.( 1966/7), at State Univ. of New-York, at Buffalo, NY. (1973), at Princeton Univ. (1976/7), at the Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii (1977), at Univ. of Michigan at Ann Arbor MI. (1980), at Univ. of California at Irvine and at UCLA (1986/7, 1998), at Stanford Univ. (1987), at the Virginia Polytechnical Institute. at Blacksburg, VA. (1989), at the Univ. of Minnesota at Minneapolis, MN. (1991), and at ETH, Switzerland (1994). He served as Visiting Professor, Dept. of Civil Eng., Univ. of
California, Irvine, CA. Fall 1997 (Joint app. with UCLA and USC). He was a Visiting Professor, Dept. of Petroleum Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 1998. He was a Visiting Professor, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, March-April, 1999.
and a Visiting professor, Delft Technological University, Delft, The Netherlands, May-June, 2001.
He has been teaching short courses for engineers, scientists and university personnel on Groundwater Hydrology, Management of Water Resources, Modeling Flow and Pollution of Groundwater and Modeling Transport Phenomena in Porous Media at many universities around the world.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY in GROUND WATER, Vol. 41, No. 3, May–June 2003 (pages 393–396)