About Solomon Family History:

Above on the left, is my grandfather, Shlomo Zalman Solomon, posing in a photographer’s studio in Jerusalem after being conscripted by the Ottomans in about 1917. He was about to be shipped to Europe to fight on the side of the Germany and Austria during what became World War I. He would have been 23 years old at the time.

On the right is my father, Emanuel Isaac Solomon, at work with the American Military Government in Linz, Austria, in 1946. He was 26 years old. He had survived his service with the U.S. Army, fighting in Belgium and Germany, and helped defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.

My father, my grandfather, my other grandparents, and my aunts and uncles are no longer alive but live on in my everyday life. As my Uncle Jerry once said of his father and mother-in-law (my grandparents), “They are the most alive, dead people you’ve ever met!” I am immensely grateful for what they taught me.

I am indebted to my father, seen here (left), who was a much-loved teacher in a high school in Union, New Jersey. The photograph was made in 1962 when he was 42 years old.

While I inherited a passion for aesthetics from my father, my mother, Miriam Bressen Solomon encouraged and helped enable my involvement in science and nature.