Alexis Mallon

He founded the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem[1] and made important early contributions to the study of the prehistory of the Levant with his excavations at Teleilat el Ghassul (1929–1934).

[2] Born in France, Mallon received his Jesuit training in Beirut, Lebanon, and spent four years studying theology in England between 1905 and 1909.

[1] After being forced to move to Cairo by the outbreak of the First World War,[2] Mallon returned to Palestine in 1919 and was finally able to establish the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem in 1927.

[2][4] Subsequent excavations at Shuqba by British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod unearthed the first traces of the Mesolithic outside of Europe and defined the Natufian culture.

[2] Contemporary press reports proclaimed the site to be the remains of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, but Mallon himself considered this unlikely.