Elisabeth Goldschmidt

Elisabeth Goldschmidt (1955)

Elisabeth Goldschmidt ( Hebrew אלישבע גולדשמידט; born as Elisabeth Wechsler on September 22, 1912 in Frankfurt am Main ; died on May 6, 1970 in Israel ) was a German-born Israeli geneticist and zoologist . She founded genetic research and teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem .

Live and act

Elisabeth Wechsler began studying medicine at Frankfurt University in 1932 , but moved to London when Hitler came to power in 1933. There she had to switch to zoology and botany . In 1936 she received her Bachelor of Science with Honors. She emigrated to Palestine with her husband Joseph Goldschmidt . Goldschmidt worked as a teacher and volunteer at the Hebrew University until she became a research assistant at the zoological faculty in 1938. In 1942 she was made a junior assistant and in 1950 an "Instructor in Genetics". On a scholarship from the American Association of University Women , Goldschmidt worked in the laboratories of geneticists Theodosius Dobzhansky at Columbia University in New York and Curt Stern at the University of California at Berkeley .

After she returned to Israel in 1951, Goldschmidt introduced genetics as a teaching discipline at the Hebrew University. Since 1952 she has given a series of lectures on genetics to medical students. Goldschmidt saw the Jewish mass immigration as a unique opportunity for genetic research and founded systematic research in the field of human genetics . After research at institutes of Human Genetics in Copenhagen and Milan, they led in collaboration with doctors at the Hadassah Hospital , genetic counseling services into Israel.

Goldschmidt became the first president of the Genetics Circle in 1955, from which the Genetics Society of Israel emerged. She successfully led the campaign against the decision to hold the 11th International Genetics Congress in Germany because its scientists were responsible for the misuse of genetic research during the Nazi regime. The congress met in 1963 under the direction of the Swiss Ernst Hadorn in The Hague , the Netherlands .

In September 1961, Goldschmidt called a conference on human genetics together with Chaim Sheba and Raphael Falk . At this conference she brought together people who carried out relevant research in this area and presented her work in an exhibition on the genetics of the Israeli population. The Genetics Laboratory, which she founded in 1963, became the Department of Genetics at the Hebrew University within a few years.

Elisabeth Goldschmidt died of suicide on May 6, 1970 . Her colleague Tirza Cohen (1925–2013) continued her research.

family

Elisabeth Wechsler was born on September 22, 1912 into an Orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main. With her husband Joseph Goldschmidt she had a daughter and son Eliezer E. Goldschmidt (* 1938), who taught agriculture.

research

In her early research on systematic cytology , Goldschmidt was particularly interested in adapting to harsh conditions such as extreme salinity. She soon expanded her interest to the genetic dynamics of populations, studying wild populations of Drosophila flies, the induction of mutations and chromosome rearrangements, and the developmental physiology of Drosophila eye pigments . In 1953 she went to Ernst Hadorn's laboratory in Zurich to learn the newly introduced paper chromatography technique . In the late 1950s, she worked with Elisabeth Stumm-Zollinger to compare the chromosomal polymorphism in natural populations of Drosophila subobscura in Austria with those of Israel who lived on the edge of the desert.

However, Goldschmidt's interest in the genetics of human disease was already a priority. She systematically expanded her research project on human genetics. She began researching the spread of Tay-Sachs disease , which was considered a "hereditary Jewish disease". Soon her main concern focused on hereditary hemolytic diseases, which were common in some Jewish communities.

In the 1960s, Goldschmidt paid particular attention to inbreeding in Jewish communities from Kurdistan . She noted the low incidence of many hereditary diseases in these communities, suggesting that after generations of intense inbreeding, genes with deleterious effects were disappearing. On the other hand, some haemolytic diseases were extremely common in these communities, combined with an increased resistance of the genetic carriers to malaria .

Fonts (selection)

• Cytological studies in Chironomidae . Dissertation, Jerusalem 1942.
• The pattern of salivary gland chromosomes . Jerusalem 1942.
• Multiple sex-chromosome mechanisms and polyploidy in animals . In: Journal of Genetics 51 (1953).
• With J. Wahrman, A. Ledermann-Klein, R. Weiss: Two years' survey of population dynamics in Drosophila melanogaster . In: Evolution 9 (1955).
• With Elisabeth Stumm-Zollinger: Geographical differentiation of inversion systems in Drosophila subobscura . In: Evolution 13 (1959).
• With A. Ronen, I. Ronen: Changing marriage systems in the Jewish communities of Israel . In: Annals of Human Genetics 24 (1960).
• With Tirza Cohen : Inter-ethnic mixture among the communities of Israel . In: Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 29 (1964).
• With A. Horowitz, Tirza Cohen, C. Levene: Thalassaemia types among Kurdish Jews in Israel . In: British Journal of Hematology 12 (1966).
• As editor: The Genetics of Migrant and Isolate Populations . 1963.

literature

• Nurit Kirsh: geneticist Elisabeth Goldschmidt. A two-fold pioneering story . In: Israel Studies . 9 (2, 2004). Pp. 71-105.
• Sara Farkas: Elisabeth Goldschmidt (1912–1970) Collected Publications . Jerusalem 1977.
• Tirza Cohen, Raphael Falk: The late Prof. Elisabeth Goldschmidt (Hebrew). In: Mada 15 (1970).
• J. Wahrman: Elisabeth Goldschmidt, 1912–1970. In: Genetics 71 (1972).
• Goldschmidt, Elisabeth , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 393

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Goldschmidt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Raphael Falk : Elisabeth Goldschmidt In: Jewish Women. A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia . (Status: February 27, 2009; English)