Born on May 2, 1860 (Budapest, Hungary)
Died on July 3, 1904 (Vienna, Austria)

Author
Jewish activist

Hungarian-born Jew Theodor Herzl was a leading force in the late-nineteenth-century movement known as Zionism, a movement to create a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. Herzl was not the first to suggest Jewish migration to Palestine, and he didn't live to see the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Yet because of his determined efforts on behalf of a Jewish state—he founded the World Zionist Organization, organized a series of World Zionist Congresses, and penned the influential pamphlet The Jewish State (1896)—Herzl is considered one of the founding fathers of Israel.

Herzl came of age at a time when Jews in...