Interests: seismotectonics, seismic hazard, seismic source characterisation, earthquake geology, surface rupture hazard, neotectonics in Israel and the Levant, statistical earthquake seismology

Professor Yaakov Ben-Tor was born in 1910 in Germany. Following the rise of the Nazis to power, he immigrated to Palestine in 1933 and was involved in the establishment of the Department of Geology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, along with Professor Leo Picard.