Pinsker, the renowned Zionist pioneer, was born in Poland. He studied law at Odessa University and medicine at the University of Moscow. Following several waves of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia, Pinsker began to question assimilation as a solution for Russian Jewry, and began to support emigration to Eretz Yisrael. In 1882 he published Auto-Emancipation, an analysis of the roots of anti-Semitism and a call for the establishment of a Jewish home, either in Palestine or elsewhere.

Pinsker eventually became chairman of the Hovevei Zion movement, directing the organization (despite factional infighting) with the backing of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Some 40 years after his death, his body was reinterred on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.