Miriam Schwarz was born in 1951 in Denmark. She made aliyah to Israel in 1970 together with her fiance they married in 1971. Mrs. Schwarz, who was widowed in 2002, has four grown children. She has a BSc, MSc and a Ph.D. in biology and has done research for many years on learning paradigms and neurophysiology in the seaslug Aplysia. In 1990 she started a science center for young children in the Beit Poster Matnas in Herzlia and has been its director from the beginning. In her free time she enjoys reading, painting, and researching her family's genealogy.