Jeheskel Shoshani

Jeheskel "Hezy" Shoshani (; January 23, 1943 – May 21, 2008) was an evolutionary biologist who studied elephants and their relatives for over 35 years.

Life and work Early life and career Shoshani was born in what is now Tel Aviv, Israel, but he held dual citizenship in the United States. His interest in elephants began in his youth after he read a Hebrew copy of Willis Lindquist's Burma Boy, which told the story of the relationship between a boy and an elephant. He began his career as a zookeeper at the Tel Aviv Zoo He went on to research elephants in Sri Lanka and Kenya and becoming an undergraduate professor at Wayne State University around 1973. Shoshani founded the Elephant Interest Group (later known as the Elephant Research Foundation) in June 1977, coauthored landmark papers on the elephant brain and vision, and was the editor and coauthor of two encyclopedic volumes on elephants and their relatives: the technical The Proboscidea: Evolution and Palaeoecology of Elephants and Their Relatives, and the layman-oriented Elephants: Majestic Creatures of The Wild. the family Numidotheriidae, and the species Eritreum melakeghebrekristosi.

Death and legacy Shoshani was among several people killed in a terrorism-linked explosion in a public minibus in downtown Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 21, 2008.