Dorothea Pertz

Dorothea Frances Matilda "Dora" Pertz , (born March 14, 1859 in London , † March 6, 1939 in Cambridge ) was a British botanist . She co-authored five books with Charles Darwin's son , Francis Darwin . She was also the first full female member in the history of the Linnean Society of London .

Live and act

Dora Pertz was the daughter of the German historian Georg Heinrich Pertz and his second wife, Leonora Horner, daughter of the Scottish geologist Leonard Horner , a progressive intellectual and a staunch advocate of Darwinism . She was fortunate enough to grow up in a family, which was not a matter of course at the time, in which the education of the female family members was also important. It was there that she also met Charles Darwin, who, like many other prominent scientists, was often a guest at her parents' home.

Pertz spent a large part of her youth in Berlin , where her father worked as a librarian at the Royal Library in Berlin, but traveled to England every year to spend some time of her young life there. In 1876, after the death of her father, she moved to Florence with her mother , returned to England in 1882 and enrolled at Newnham College , Cambridge . After another year in Italy , she returned to Cambridge in 1884 and in 1885 passed the first part of the three-part Natural Sciences Tripos in botany . After she had also passed the second level and would have actually been entitled to the degree of a bachelor's degree , she was refused because at the time women were not allowed to hold academic titles. It was not until 1932 that she was awarded the degree of MA .

After completing her studies, she conducted research on the physiology of plants with Francis Darwin, Charles Darwin's son . Darwin was lecturing at the University of Cambridge in the position of reader at the time . During this period of collaboration from 1892 to 1912, they published five books based on the results of their research on botany. At the same time she also published a work in which she and William Bateson shared the experiences they had made while researching the reproductive species of the plant genus Speedwell (Veronica). She herself published two books on her own research, independently of co-authors.

In 1905 she got the honor of being the first woman ever to be accepted as a full member of the Linnean Society of London , although she herself never belonged to the sympathizers of the women's movement , which at the time was almost militant .

After Darwin retired, she assisted Frederick Blackman in researching the meristem ( tissue of plants), but after a year of observing germination, she turned to other tasks with disappointment. Agnes Arber said: She came to recognize that the plant physiology of the twentieth century was developing on lines widely divergent from those on which she had been educated and that it demanded a grasp of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, which she did not possess . (She realized that research in the field of plant physiology in the 20th century could no longer be carried out seriously without in-depth knowledge of mathematics , physics and chemistry , which she did not have.)

After the end of the collaboration with Blackman, Pertz indexed (index or index) German journals on plant physiology such as the Biochemische Zeitschrift and the Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie completely until 1935. At the same time, from 1923 to 1936, she also illustrated the contributions of her friend Edith Rebecca Saunders on phytotomy (plant anatomy), in various printed matter in Great Britain, both of which, the writings and the drawings, received high recognition.

Pertz never had a job at Newnham School or the University of Cambridge. During the First World War , she worked at a convalescence clinic in Cambridge as a physiotherapist for wounded soldiers.

After a long illness, she died on March 6, 1939 in Cambridge. Her body was cremated and buried in Brookwood Cemetery .

Publications by Dorothea Pertz

• On the disposal of the nutlets in certain labiates ; Natural Science , London, 1884

Together with Francis Darwin:

• On the artificial production of rhythm in plants ; Annals of Botany, 1892
• On the artificial production of rhythm in plants, with a note on the position of maximum heliotropic stimulation ; Annals of Botany, 1903
• Notes on the statolith theory and geotropism. I. Experiments on the Effects of Centrifugal Force. II. The behavior of tertiary roots Royal Society, 1904
• The position of maximum geotropic stimulation ; Annals of Botany, 1905
• On a new method of estimating the aperture of stomata ; Royal Society, 1912

swell

• Creese, Mary RS, Creese, Thomas M .: Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British Women in Science, 1800-1900 A Survey of Their Contributions to Research ; Scarecrow Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-585-27684-7

proof

1. ↑ Agnes Arber: Miss Dorothea FM Pertz. Nature , April 8, 1939, accessed March 30, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Natural Sciences Tripos. University of Cambridge, accessed March 30, 2020 . 
3. ^ On the Artificial Production of Rhythm in Plants
4. ^ On the Artificial Production of Rhythm in Plants. With a note on the position of maximum heliotropic stimulation: With four figures in the text
5. ↑ Notes on the statolith theory of geotropism. I. Experiments on the Effects of Centrifugal Force. II. The behavior of tertiary roots.
6. ↑ THE POSITION OF MAXIMUM GEOTROPIC STIMULATION
7. ^ On a new method of estimating the aperture of stomata