The Industry's Idea Man: Zvi Yehuda

RAPAPORT... Zvi Yehuda is a man of few words, but his accomplishments inthe diamond industry speak volumes. The 82-year-old Israel native is thecreator of numerous inventions that have changed the face of the trade, andeven the face of diamonds themselves. Yehuda first learned about diamonds in 1953 as a precocious16-year-old. His father, wanting to break into a sector that was closed tothose not born into it, hired an insider to give eight people a private lessonon diamond cleaving. Yehuda realized he could recycle the diamond dust createdfrom bruting, clean it, and sell it back to diamond cutters to use forgrinding. With no formal training - just a head full of ideas and abrazen confidence - he took his concept to the head of Israel's IndustryMinistry. The minister, noting Yehuda's youth, suggested he send his father into pitch instead, but his father insisted that Yehuda be allowed to present hisown idea. After witnessing a demonstration of the boy's recycling abilities,the minister commissioned a factory for him, which Yehuda ran for three yearsbefore leaving the government to open his own business together with hisfather. At the age of 23, Yehuda would go on to introduce the firstset of digital scales for diamonds, and five years after that, he created thefirst diamond laser-cutting machine, along with a number of other inventions. 'They are like my children' While his ideas just seem to come to him, picking the one hefeels changed the industry the most is a much more daunting task. "They are like my children," he says, "If you ask me tochoose which of my four kids I prefer...." He stops, shaking his head. When pressed, he and his son Dror - who runs the businessand helps his father execute his ideas - get into a friendly debate over whichinnovation has had the biggest impact on the industry. Dror believes it's theclarity enhancement process his father invented, which vastly improves adiamond's optical properties to the naked eye. "Every diamantaire dreams that one day he will walk in inthe morning, open his safe, and all of his diamonds will suddenly beD-flawless," Dror remembers his father telling him when he asked how he hadcome up with the idea for the clarity-enhancing chemical and its insertionmethod. "It had such a huge impact on the industry at the time,"Dror continues. "For 30 years, it was a way for thousands of jewelers aroundthe world to make a living and to sell diamonds with imperfections that theyordinarily would not have been able to sell for as high a value." A moment later, though, Dror contradicts himself, statingthat the color meter his father created in 1977 for rough diamonds was hisgreatest invention. Traders place a rough diamond inside the device, and ittells them what color the rough will yield after cutting - thereby removing theguessing game and letting diamantaires know in advance whether they will getvalue out of their purchase. The great synthetics detective Yehuda himself, though, believes his Sherlock Holmessynthetic-diamond detector is his most influential contribution. The deviceidentified 100% of all lab-grown diamonds in the Diamond ProducersAssociation's Project Assure test, and it displayed complete accuracy inlabeling all but 2.5% of mined stones as natural. The idea for the Sherlock Holmes dates back to the 1960s,when Yehuda decided to try and manufacture a diamond. He managed to makediamond dust, but while he never pursued it further, he knew there would come atime when someone would. "Since I was young, I recall him saying, 'One day, therewill be lab-grown diamonds,'" Dror recalls. "He knew from back then that ifsomeone were to eventually make a lab-grown diamond, there would be a need fora machine that could differentiate between those and natural." All in all, it took Yehuda two shots and a few months -mostly spent sourcing parts - to devise a working prototype for the syntheticsdetector. While Yehuda never went to university and got terriblegrades at night school, he sees ideas in his head, he says, and instinctivelyknows how to fulfill them. His biggest asset is his deep-set conviction thathis ideas will work. When initially testing the prototype for the SherlockHolmes, Dror inserted a natural sample that showed positive as lab-grown. Hetold his father the machine didn't work. The next day, his father told him itdid. Dror tested the sample again, and again it showed up as lab-grown; again,he reported that the device didn't work. This happened several times over thenext three months, with Yehuda insisting each time that the machine wasfunctioning properly. Dror finally decided to test a new sample. Lo and behold,the machine analyzed it correctly, leading him to realize his initial samplehad been irregular and had caused a false positive. When he told his father themachine worked, Yehuda's response was a simple "I know." Doing what he loves Yehuda worries about the future of the diamond industry,which he says is under siege from a lack of marketing, the emergence ofsynthetics, and a generation that fears blood diamonds and is steering awayfrom mined stones. Yet he continues because he loves what he does. Working withdiamonds is all he's ever wanted to do since that first taste he got as a youngboy, and he's passionate about contributing to the trade's progress. The way Dror describes it, Yehuda's name is synonymous withthe diamond sector. "My father has made such an impact on the industry, I tellpeople, 'If you don't know my father, you aren't in the industry.'" While Yehuda has no plans to retire just yet, he also has noprojects currently on the horizon. "People approach us all the time and say,'We want you to do this' or 'We want you to do that,' but right now, we're justworking on improving," he says. "We need to leave something for other people todo." This article was first published in the November issue of Rapaport Magazine.Image: Zvi Yehuda. (Dror Yehuda)