Zvi Hermann Schapira was born in a small Lithuanian town, Erswilken, not far from the larger town of Tauragė,[2] part of the Russian Empire, but also close to the Prussian border.[3] After studying for the rabbinate, Schapira was first appointed rabbi at age twenty-four, but then decided to dedicate his life to the secular sciences.[2] He first moved to Odessa, and in 1868 to Berlin, where he enrolled for three years at the Gewerbeakademie [de].[2] Schapira returned to Odessa, where he worked as a merchant for the next five years.[2]
In 1878 he switched back to scientific studies, spending the next four years in the German university town of Heidelberg where he especially concentrated on mathematics and physics.[2] In 1880, he applied for a PhD examination, with mathematics as a main subject and mechanics and Hebrew Language and Literature as secondary subjects.[3] That same year, with Lazarus Fuchs as thesis advisor, he earned his doctorate with the dissertation Lineare homogene Cofunktionen, "Linearhomogeneouscofunctions".[3] In 1883 he established himself as Privatdozent in mathematics at the University of Heidelberg, becoming assistant professor in 1887.[3] Schapira published his mathematical work in a number of specialised journals.[2]
In the aftermath of the Russian pogroms of 1881, Schapira lent his support to the proto-Zionist Hibbat Zion movement.[4] In 1884, Schapira proposed the establishment of an organization for the acquisition of land in Eretz Yisrael and came up with the idea of the "Blue Box" as means of collecting money.[5] He presented proposal for the creation of a Jewish national fund at the First Zionist Congress of 1897,[4] where he supported the Basel program, proving to be an enthusiastic Zionist from the very beginning of the movement.[2] Although the Jewish National Fund (JNF) came into being only in 1901, at the Fifth Congress, after Shapira's death, he is still considered to be the "father" of the JNF.[6][4]