Isaac Guelfat was born in Novoukrainka, Ukraine in 1900. He immigrated to Eretz Yisrael (Mandatory Palestine) in 1922.

Guelfat earned his master’s degree at the Institute of International Studies in Geneva and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Brussels in 1931. Upon his return to Palestine, he founded and edited the first economic journal in Israel, HaMeshek HaShitufi. From 1936 to 1959, Guelfat was a senior faculty member at the Higher School of Law and Economics in Tel Aviv. He served as Israel’s economic representative in Scandinavia from 1948 to 1949 and as Director of the Economic Research Department at the Ministry of Finance from 1949 to 1953. In 1962 he joined the Department of Economics at the Hebrew University.

His main research areas were: cooperation and cooperative economics; socialist economic thought; the Arab economy in Mandatory Palestine and the Middle East.

Isaac Guelfat passed away in Jerusalem in 1977.