Elie A. Shneour

Elie Alexis Shneour (December 11, 1925, in Neuilly-sur-Seine − April 14, 2015, in La Jolla) was a French-born American neurochemist, biophysicist and author.

Early life Shneour was born in France into a Jewish family, the son of Zalman Shneour (Shneur) and Salomea (née Landau). His father, a known Yiddish and Hebrew poet and writer (later, recipient of the 1955 Israel Prize), emigrated from Czarist Russia in the early 1900s. His mother was from Poland. Elie had one sibling, sister Renée Rebecca, who later became Spanish dancer Laura Toledo.

Addressing challenges and constraints faced by researchers, Shneour argued for a working consensus between scientists and bureaucracy in charge of funding, commenting that "It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that had the present bureaucratic structure being in operation when poliomyelitis research was in its heyday, we might today have a compact, efficient, computer-operated portable iron lung rather than two vaccines."

Selected works Extraterrestrial Life: An Anthology and Bibliography (Editors: Elie A. Shneour and Eric A. Ottesen), Washington, National Academy of Sciences – NRC (National Research Council, publication no. 1296A), 1966 Life Beyond Earth: A Vistas of Science Book by Samuel Moffat & Ellie A. Shneour, National Science Teachers Association, Scholastic Book Services, 1969 The Malnourished Mind, Anchor Press, 1974