Who Was Physicist Hedwig Kohn?

and more. But a few of those people, like physicist head Vig Kohn, have embodied enough resilience to triumph in their chosen field. Born on April five, eighteen eighty seven, in Breslau, Germany now Votswaffe, Poland, Kohn paved a unique path for herself early on, auditing at a local university at the age of twenty, a year before women were

even allowed to officially enroll. In nineteen thirteen, she earned a doctorate in physics and went on to become one of just three women certified to teach the subject at any German university before World War Two. But in nineteen thirty three, the Rye saying Nazi powers forced Kohn and her fellow Jewish colleagues Lisa Meitner and Harthas Bonner out

of their jobs. Kohen was able to support herself through research work for the next two years, and in five she was able to take on a three month project at an observatorium in Switzerland, but the short term endeavor didn't pan out into a permanent escape from the atrocities occurring throughout Eastern Europe. In November of ninety eight, a two day terror strike known as Crystal Knock or the

Night of Broken Glass took place. Nazis in Germany murdered nearly a hundred Jewish people, arrested thirty thousand men and sent them to concentration camps, and destroyed Jewish homes and businesses. Cohen knew she had to get out, but how she lacked the global acclaim that might warrant an international work visa, and most American university jobs required job applicants to have recent teaching experience, a qualification con lacked due to the

Nazi imposed ban. In the same month as Crystal Knocked, a Princeton University physicist named Rudolph Laudenboard began pushing for Cohen's immigration. Anborg had directed Kohn's research in Breslau and

had made a name for himself at Princeton. With the help of his initial insistence, the International Federation of University Women and the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning in London created a university position for Cohn in nineteen thirty nine, but just before she could flee, World War two officially broke out and England provoked all visas

for enemy aliens. Refusing to give up hope, Kohn, Landborg and representatives from several international organizations exchanged more than seventy letters with institutions, eventually securing con job offers at three United States schools. She was granted a visa to the US via Sweden just before her only brother was deported and killed by the Nazis. Kohen eventually made it from

Stockholm to Greensboro, North Carolina, in nineteen forty. She went on to spend nearly two decades teaching physics at both the Women's College of the University of North Carolina and

Wellesley College in Massachusetts. When she retired in nineteen fifty two, the German government awarded Cohen a pension and the title of Professor Emerita, but Cohen wasn't quite ready to call it quits on her career she took on a research position at Duke University studying flame spectroscopy, and in the nineteen sixties contributed extensively to the frameworks of plasma physics

and combustion science. By the time of her death in nineteen sixty four, Cohn had produced numerous scientific publications, written several book chapters, secured a patent, and made a lasting impact as an innovator within the stamp world and beyond. Today's episode was written by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's

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