Heinz Oppenheimer was an agronomist active in Israel. Born in Berlin, his father, Franz Oppenheimer, was a sociologist and other family members included a biochemist (Carl Oppenheimer, 1874-1941) and a geologist (Paul Oppenheimer, 1863-1934).

After his schooling, Heinz Oppenheimer served as a Russian interpreter in Galicia during the First World War. He then began his studies in botany, chemistry and philosophy at Berlin University, continuing at Frankfurt am Main, Freiburg and Vienna. He worked part-time as a gardener during this period.

In 1922 Oppenheimer published a work on the inhibition of germination in tomatoes and other fruit. He went on to work in the plant physiology section of the horticultural school in Geisenheim am Rhein, for a private tree nursery, and then in bacteriology at the state biology laboratory in Berlin-Dahlem. Here he developed a method of preventing root diseases in young fruit trees. This brought him the offer of a permanent position as a scientific officer, which Oppenheimer turned down in order to travel to Palestine.

Arriving in 1925, at first he worked for a plantation company. He left this position the following year, however, when the family of the late agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn offered him the task of organising and editing Aaronsohn's work. Oppenheimer set to work on the herbarium of 2,000 plants from the Near East and published Aaronsohn's papers in book form.

In 1930, Otto Warburg offered Oppenheimer a position at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, as head of the new plant physiology section. From 1935 he led agronomic research, specialising in the cultivation of citrus fruit, and in 1942 was named head of citrus culture in the Hebrew University School of Agriculture. Promoted to Associate Professor in 1949 and Professor of Plant Physiology in 1957, he became known as Israel's leading authority on citrus cultivation. His research on the Rutaceae family was also praised.

Oppenheimer founded the Palestine Journal of Botany, Palestine's first English language scientific journal, in 1935, serving as its editor until 1953. He received Israel's national prize for agriculture in 1959 in recognition of his work.

Sources:
F. Leimkugel, 2005, "Botanischer Zionismus: Otto Warburg (1859-1938) und die Anfänge institutionalisierter Naturwissenschaften in 'Erez Israel'", Englera, 26: 296-297
H.R. Oppenheimer, 1952, "Geobotanical Research in Palestine", Plant Ecology, 3(4-5): 301-320.