Georges Montefiore-Levi

Georges Montefiore-Levi (18 February 1832 – 24 April 1906) was a Belgian politician, industrialist and inventor of Jewish extraction who created the first phosphorus bronze.[1]

Georges Montefiore-Levi
Bust of Montefiore in Liège (Belgium)
Born(1832-02-18)18 February 1832
Streatham, United Kingdom
Died24 April 1906(1906-04-24) (aged 74)
Brussels, Belgium
NationalityBelgian
Known forInventor of phosphorus bronze
Spouse
Hortense Bischoffsheim
​
​
(m. 1866⁠–⁠1901)​
Senator
In office
1882–1901

Early life

He was born in Streatham, South London. His father, Isaac Levi, was a merchant, and his mother was a first cousin of financier Moses Montefiore.[2]

Career

A businessman and an active philanthropist, Montefiore-Levi represented Liège in the Senate from 1882 to 1901, and he was the president of the 1892 international monetary conference that met in Brussels.[3]

Montefiore-Levi founded one of Belgium's oldest engineering schools, the Institut Montefiore in Liège, and it later became part of the University of Liège. He also established an asylum for convalescent children in Esneux that he named after his wife.[4] He had an interest in photography and was once president of the Belgian Association of Photography. He improved existing technology so that it was possible to take up to fifteen wax-paper negatives without opening a camera, and he introduced a canopy that allowed for the immediate processing of collodion negatives.[5]

In 1866, he married Hortense Bischoffsheim, daughter of Jonathan-Raphaël Bischoffsheim. He died at his home in Brussels in 1906.[6]

References
  1. "Jews in Belgium". Archived from the original on 6 February 2008.
  2. "Silver talk". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 11 December 1892.
  3. Guidi, Marco E. L. (2017). Economists in Parliament in the Liberal Age: (1848–1920). Routledge. ISBN 9781351941778.
  4. "Levi, Georges". search.arch.be (in French). Retrieved 27 October 2018.
  5. Taylor, Roger; Schaaf, Larry John (2007). Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 341. ISBN 9781588392251.
  6. "Mr. Montefiore Levi". The Manchester Guardian. 26 April 1906.
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