Shmuel Shaltiel was born in Greece and immigrated to Israel as a child. He was awarded his M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Hebrew University in 1960, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1964. He joined the staff of the Weizmann Institute in 1967 and served the Institute as Deputy President, Acting President, as Dean of the Feinberg Graduate School, as Chairman of the Scientific Council, as the Head of the Department of Chemical Immunology, and as Head of the Department of Biological Regulation until 2000, where he was the incumbent of the Hella and Derrick Kleeman Chair of Biochemistry. He was a member of the National Planning and Budgeting Committee for Higher Education. Abroad, he was Scholar in Residence at the US National Institutes of Health, and a Visiting Professor at the University of California Berkeley, Lund University and ETH Zurich. He was also elected an Honorary Member of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Prof. Shaltiel’s major research interests involved the biochemistry of proteins and enzymes, and the relationship between their structure, function and regulation. He pioneered a conceptual new approach to the characterization and separation of proteins and cells (known as hydrophilic chromatography) which is now widely used in biotechnology, and for which he was awarded the Analytical Biochemistry Prize, awarded bi-annually by the European Societies of Analytical Biochemistry. In Israel, Prof. Shaltiel won the Hestrin, Laundau and Weizmann Prizes, and in 1994 was awarded the prestigious Rothschild Prize for highly-regarded research on cardiovascular disorders and the control of blood clot dissolution (fibrinolysis). His findings shed light on the regulation of fibrinolysis and thus had an impact on the design of new drugs for the diagnosis and treatment of a wide array of diseases associated with deregulation, such as thrombosis, stroke, and myocardial infarction.

He died at the age of 67 continuing his creative and original research right up until his death.

He was married to Sarah (Mass) and had two daughters, Orna (Cadmon) and Ruth (Waksman).