Milestone: Avinoam Danin (1939–2015)

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Noted Israeli botanist Avinoam Danin passed away on December 12, 2015, at the age of 76. At the time of his death, he was Associate Professor Emeritus of Botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Danin’s specialty was the vegetation of Israel, Sinai and Jordan, and throughout his career, he discovered dozens of new plant species and subspecies in the region.^a He maintained a popular website with his son, Barak, called Flora of Israel Online, which offered comprehensive information on the plant life in Israel and surrounding areas.

In his work, Danin analyzed the flora of historic structures and artifacts such as Trajan’s column in Rome, Jerusalem’s Ottoman city walls, the Scottish Church (St. Andrews Hospice) in Jerusalem and, most famously, the Shroud of Turin.

The controversial Shroud of Turin, purported to be Jesus’ burial shroud, is a 14-by-3.5-foot linen cloth that depicts front and back images of a man who appears to have been crucified. Radiocarbon testing conducted on the shroud dates it to the 13th–14th centuries. The shroud has been regarded as a relic, a forgery and even a work of art.

In the 1990s, Danin examined the botanical evidence associated with the shroud and published his findings in Flora of the Shroud of Turin (St. Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden Press, 1999) with coauthors Alan D. Whanger, Uri Baruch and Mary Whanger.^b Danin detected on the shroud the images of four plant species that come from the area between Jerusalem and Hebron. These plant species, moreover, bloomed in March and April, thus suggesting that the shroud had been used during these months (i.e., around Easter). Danin and his coauthors concluded that the shroud dates to before the eighth century C.E. and was used near Jerusalem. His updated study Botany of the Shroud: The Story of Floral Images on the Shroud of Turin (Jerusalem: Danin Publishing, 2010) includes an analysis of 3D images of the shroud, which, according to Danin, proved that the images of plants observed on the shroud were real.

Danin’s life-long passion for botany began when he was a mere toddler.

“My parents told me that when I was 3 years old, I always said, ‘Look, father, I found a flower,’” Danin said in an interview in 2012.¹ “My grandparents gave me the book Analytical Flora of Palestine on my 13th birthday—I checked off every plant I determined in the book’s index of plant names.”

From toddler to world-renowned expert, Avinoam Danin never lost his sense of wonder.

Noted Israeli botanist Avinoam Danin passed away on December 12, 2015, at the age of 76. At the time of his death, he was Associate Professor Emeritus of Botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.