Ari Rappoport

Ari Rappoport (1962 – June 23, 2025) was a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the last 15 years of his life, he expanded his research to neuroscience, neurology, and psychiatry, where he developed theories about brain activity, disorders, and diseases.

Early life and education

He was born and raised in Jerusalem, the son of Zvi Rappoport, a chemistry professor. He studied in elementary and high school at the Hebrew Gymnasium Rehavia and graduated in 1980. He did his military service in Unit 8200.[1]

From 1985 to 1987 he completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[2] His doctoral dissertation, supervised by Lawrence Rudolph, entitled "Data Structures and Algorithms for Computational Graphics and Geometric Sampling", was done at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1987–1990.

Career

In 1991, he joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's School of Computer Science, and eventually became a full professor.[3]

In 2010, together with doctoral students Oren Tzur and Dmitry Davidov, he developed an algorithm for identifying sarcasm, which was one of the 50 greatest inventions of 2010 according to Time magazine.[1][4][5]

Theory about brain disorders

In 2025, his book The Science of the Brain: Function, Dysfunction and Disease was published by Elsevier. In the book, Rappoport offered explanations for a number of psychiatric and neurological conditions. In the course of writing the book, Rappoport read nearly 500,000 articles and carefully read 40,000 of them.[1][6]

His work was recognized by Nobel Laureate Roger Kornberg, who described Rappoport's work as bringing "exceptional insight and analytical ability to the entirety of brain science, and derived unprecedented understanding and predictive power, as well as detailed treatment proposals."[7]

Personal life

Rappoport was married twice, and was the father of five children. He died on June 23, 2025, after a battle with small cell lung cancer despite being a non-smoker.[1][8][9]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Dani Bar-On (July 5, 2025). "Could an Autodidact's Radical Theories Reshape How We Treat Autism, ADHD and Alzheimer's?".
  2. ^ "Ari Rappoport". ORCID.
  3. ^ Ari Rappoport. "Ari Rappoport". Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
  4. ^ Oren Tsur, Dmitry Davidov, Ari Rappoport (2010). "CWSM – A Great Catchy Name: Semi-Supervised Recognition of Sarcastic Sentences in Online Product Reviews" (PDF). Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ Steven James Snyder (November 11, 2010). "The 50 Best Inventions of 2010". TIME Magazine. Archived from the original on May 25, 2013.
  6. ^ The Science of the Brain: Function, Dysfunction and Disease. Academic Press. 2025-04-11. ISBN 978-0-443-45009-9.
  7. ^ "Re-Thinking the Brain". 2025.
  8. ^ "The Story". YouTube. May 13, 2025.
  9. ^ "In Memory of Prof. Ari Rappoport (1962-2025)". The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering. July 2025.
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