Charlotte Auerbach

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Charlotte Auerbach (born May 14, 1899 in Krefeld , † March 17, 1994 in Edinburgh ) was a German-English biologist , geneticist and university professor .

Live and act

Auerbach was born in Krefeld in 1899. Her grandfather was the anatomist Leopold Auerbach from Breslau . In 1904 her family moved from Krefeld on the Lower Rhine to Berlin . There her father received the position of a senior government councilor in the Reich Health Office . Charlotte attended the Auguste Viktoria School . After graduating from high school, she studied zoology , botany , chemistry and physics for five years at the universities in Berlin and Würzburg . In autumn 1924 she passed the state examination in biology , chemistry and physics. From 1924 to 1925 she worked first as a teacher at a private school and then for three years at various Berlin high schools. Between 1928 and 1929 and again from 1931 to 1933, in addition to her work as a teacher, she was also a scholarship holder in Otto Mangold's department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology .

In 1933, the year of the National Socialist “ seizure of power ”, Charlotte Auerbach emigrated to Great Britain as a racially persecuted person . In Edinburgh she was able to continue her studies with the help of a scholarship and completed her dissertation in 1935 . From 1938 she began her research in the field of genetics together with the later Nobel Prize winner in medicine, Hermann Joseph Muller . While Muller later went to the US, Charlotte Auerbach stayed at the Institute of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh. In 1947 she took on a teaching position there and was finally given a professorship in 1959. Until her retirement in 1969 she headed the department for mutation research of the Medical Research Council. During the Second World War, Auerbach first researched the mutagenic effects of mustard gas on Drosophila . She was able to demonstrate the mutagenic effect of chemicals for the first time and was considered a pioneer in the field of chemical mutagenesis.

In 1949 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . Since 1957 Charlotte Auerbach was a member of the Royal Society in London , and since 1970 of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC

Fonts

  • Woe to you that you are a grandson. Hereditary health in the atomic age. Translated from English by William F. Reinig. Franckh, Stuttgart 1957
  • (Contributions): genetics, science of decision. A series of lectures. Kröner, Stuttgart 1957
  • Genetics. Heredity, selection, eugenics. [Translated from the American by Margarete Bormann]. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1967

Honors / awards

  • On June 1, 1984, at the annual meeting of the Society for Genetics at the University of Heidelberg, she was awarded the Gregor Mendel Prize, donated by the Association of Home Loyal Cool Traders . On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Johann Gregor Mendel's death , Ms. Auerbach was honored for her research on chemical mutagenesis .
  • Charlotte-Auerbach-Straße was named after her in the Lower Saxony community of Stuhr .

literature

  • Reinhard Rürup : Charlotte Auerbach - Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Berlin-Dahlem . In: Ders .: Fates and Careers. Memorial book for the researchers expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society by the National Socialists . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2008, p. 147
  • Annette Vogt: A rare career for an emigrant. The scientist Charlotte Auerbach (1899–1994) . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 10, 1999, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 54–59 ( luise-berlin.de ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ute Deichmann : Charlotte Auerbach . In: Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg: Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993, pp. 32-33
  2. ↑ shaper RSE Fellows 1783-2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 6, 2019 .
  3. ^ Society for Genetics
  4. ↑ Association of home-loyal cool traders e. V.
  5. ↑ Festive program for the award ceremony. (PDF; 472 kB) Ed. Association of home-loyal Kuhländer, the home region of Mendels; Retrieved September 7, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Auerbach, Charlotte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-English biologist, geneticist and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Krefeld
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1994
Place of death Edinburgh