Professor Ruth Lapidoth (nee Eschelbacher) was born in Germany in 1930 and immigrated to Palestine in 1938. She studied law at the Hebrew University, and did post-graduate studies in Paris (Ph.D. at the Law School, and Diplome at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales). From 1956 until 2001 she taught at the Hebrew University, in the field of International Law, the Law of the Sea, and the Arab-Israeli conflict and its resolution. She is also a senior Research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Since 2001, she is professor of International Law at the School of Law, the College of Management. In addition, she has taught and done research at various institutions abroad: the University of Paris, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., New York University School of Law, the Center for the Study of Marine Policy at the University of Delaware, the University of Geneva, the Bellagio Study and Conference Center, the University of Southern California, Tulane and Northwestern Universities, Duke University School of Law, United States Institute of Peace, Georgetown University Law Center, St. Anthony’s College (Oxford), the Institute of Public Law and International Relations of Thessaloniki, the Ludwig-Maxmilians University and the University of Melbourne (Australia). During 1984-1986 she was Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Israel Law Review, and during 1985-1989 served as Chairman of the Israel Universities Study Group for Middle Eastern Affairs. During 1994-1996 she was the Director of the Institute of European Studies at the Hebrew University.

In addition to her academic career, she has been active in the diplomatic field: she was a member of the Delegation of Israel to the United Nations (1976) as well as to the Humanitarian Law Conference (1977) and the Red Cross Conference (1981). She has participated in part of the negotiations for the Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt (1979), and was the Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel (1979-1981). In 1999 she was invited to join a group of experts that advised the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Her judicial activity involved her membership in the arbitration panel established in order to solve a boundary dispute between Egypt and Israel, including the Taba area (1986-1988). Since 1989 she is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Professor Lapidoth has written eight books and more than eighty articles dealing with questions of international law, the law of the sea, human rights, the Arab-Israeli conflict and its resolution, and Jerusalem.

She is the year 2000 recipient of the Prominent Woman in International Law award from the WILIG group of the American Society of International Law.