Dan Hardy Yaalon (Hebrew: דן הארדי יעלון; May 11, 1924 – January 29, 2014) was an Israeli pedologist and soil scientist.

During that time, Yaalon was offered an internship at the Zionist agricultural training program in Denmark, as a preparatory step for emigrating to Israel.

In September 1943, after a long period of hiding and struggling to feed himself, he began academic studies at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen.

In 1949, he joined the recently established Israel Defense Forces (IDF), serving a year in the Scientific Service Corps ("Hemed").

After demobilization from the IDF, Yaalon found employment as a schoolteacher of chemistry and agriculture in Beit Yerach school, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Around fifteen years later a young Nahal group (a paramilitary Israel Defense Forces program that combines military service and the establishment of agricultural settlements) that settled in the eastern foothills of Mt.

[1] In 1954, Yaalon was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and posted to a post-doctoral position at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in England.

[7] In August 1970, a joint ISSS and INQUA symposium was held in Amsterdam, on the 'Age of Parent Material and Soils', a result of correspondence between Yaalon, Robert Ruhe (1918-1993), and Ferdinand van Baren (1905-1975).

[9] In 1973 Yaalon and his former student, Eliezer Ganor (1935-2011), published a work concerning the important role of aeolian dust on the formation of soils in the eastern Mediterranean during the Quaternary.

[10] In that work, he discussed the global modes of dust and paths of distribution, and presented evidence that the red color of the Terra Rossa soils originated from the presence of iron oxides in airborne dust, while contradicting Reifenberg and others, who had attributed this color to carbon oxides from the underlying parent rock.

[1] Subsequently, Yaalon's arguments for the key role of Quaternary aeolian dust in the formation of soils gained international acceptance.

Another of Yaalon's editorial works was a special issue of Geoderma entitled "Climatic and Lithostratigraphic Significance of Paleosols", summarizing a symposium of the same name held in Ottawa, Canada.

In 1994, at the age of 70 and two years past official retirement, Yaalon left his office at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and only seldom returned to it, continuing his writing, editing and reviewing from his home.

In the summer of 2013 Yaalon's health deteriorated, and on 29 January 2014 he died at home in Mevaseret Zion, Israel, surrounded by his family.

In 1952 Dan Yaalon married Rita Singer (1926–2010), and soon after their marriage they chose to live in Kiryat Moshe in western Jerusalem.

In April 2015 a special IUSS symposium in honor of Yaalon was held at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna and Uherske Hradiste.

[16] Dan Yaalon has contributed to more than 200 publications, including original articles, book chapters and reviews, conference papers, scientific notes, encyclopedia entries and highly cited abstracts.