Emmy Klieneberger Nobel

Review article by Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel from 1961 on her studies on mycoplasma

Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel (born  February 25, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main , †  September 11, 1985 ) was a German - British microbiologist of Jewish descent . From 1922 she worked at the Municipal Hygienic University Institute in Frankfurt and, after she was the first woman to be habilitated at the University of Frankfurt , from 1930 also as a university lecturer. In 1933 she emigrated to London due to the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era , where she worked at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine until 1962 . She is considered to be the co-discoverer of the mycoplasmas , which are important pathogens , on which she published fundamental work on their morphology and growth.

Life

Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1892 as the youngest child to parents of Jewish origin . However, the Jewish religion did not play a significant role in the life of the family. Her parents, who had their two daughters baptized , had left the Jewish community, were striving for assimilation into German society and described themselves as free religious . The father, who worked as a wine merchant, also had his first name changed from "Abraham" to "Adolf". After attending school in her hometown, Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel initially also completed the teachers' seminar there, which she completed in 1911. Two years later she graduated from high school, also in Frankfurt, and in the same year began studying botany and zoology , mathematics and physics at the University of Göttingen . From 1914 she continued her studies at the newly founded University of Frankfurt , where she received her doctorate in botany in 1917 . She then studied mathematics again for a semester in Göttingen and, on her return to Frankfurt in 1918, passed the state examination for teaching authorization in upper secondary schools. After a year-long legal traineeship at schools in Frankfurt, she passed the pedagogical exam in November 1919. She then worked for three years as a teacher of physics, chemistry, biology and arithmetic at a private girls' school in Dresden .

In 1922 she went back to Frankfurt, where she got a position as a bacteriologist at the Municipal Hygienic University Institute under Max Neisser . In addition to her work in the institute's routine clinical analysis, she also devoted herself to research. In 1930 she was the first woman to receive her habilitation at the University of Frankfurt , after which she worked there as a lecturer in addition to her work at the hygiene institute. In September 1933, due to her Jewish descent, her teaching license was revoked on the basis of the law for the restoration of the civil service , and a few days later she emigrated to London , where she received a position as a scientist at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in 1934 . Her brother Carl Klieneberger , who was chief physician and head of the internal medicine department of the municipal hospital in Zittau until 1933 , committed suicide shortly before his license to practice medicine was withdrawn in September 1938, as did her mother and sister in 1941 due to the increasing anti-Semitic persecution at the age of 93 and 60 years. She helped her brother Otto Klieneberger, who was the senior physician at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Königsberg , to leave Germany via Great Britain to South America , and she also supported a number of nephews and nieces in emigrating to England. On January 28, 1944, in London, she married the pediatrician Edmund Nobel from Vienna , who had also come to England as an emigrant , but who died two years later at the age of 62. Interrupted by a brief stint at the Hygienic University Institute of the City of Zurich in 1947, she remained at the Lister Institute until her retirement in 1962 , and died in 1985.

Scientific work

Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel published around 80 scientific publications in the course of her career, particularly on the morphology and morphogenesis of bacteria. Her achievements included, among other things, the description of special cell wall-free forms of some types of bacteria that arise under certain culture conditions and were called "L-phase" or "L-form" by her. In addition, in the course of her career she made a significant contribution to the discovery of mycoplasma , which she initially called "Pleuropneumonia-like Bodies", and in 1962 published the first monograph on this bacterial genus under the title "Pleuropneumonia-like organisms (PPLO) Mycoplasmataceae" . At about the same time as her retirement, the importance of mycoplasmas as pathogens in humans , animals and plants was recognized, which made her previous fundamental work on their morphology and growth increasingly relevant and her role as co-founder of the microbiology of mycoplasmas was generally recognized.

Awards

In 1967, on the occasion of her 75th birthday, Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel was made an honorary member of the Robert Koch Institute and a corresponding member of the German Society for Bacteriology and Hygiene. Nine years later he was appointed the first honorary member for life of the newly founded International Organization for Mycoplasmology , which has also been conferring the "Emmy Klieneberger Nobel Award" for outstanding research on mycoplasma since 1980. In addition, she received the Robert Koch Medal in 1980 for her outstanding life's work .

Works (selection)

• Pleuropneumonia-like organisms (PPLO) Mycoplasmataceae. London and New York 1962
• Focus on Bacteria. London 1965
• Pioneering work in medical microbiology. Life memories. Fischer, Stuttgart / New York, NY 1977, ISBN 3-437-10497-7 ; English edition: Memoirs. Translated by Francis A. Blake. Academic Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-12-414850-6 (autobiography).

literature

• Ruth Lemcke, LH Collier: Obituary Notice: Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel. 1892-1985. In: Journal of Medical Microbiology. 22/1986. The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 183-185, ISSN  0022-2615
• Obituary: Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel. In: British Medical Journal . 291/1985. BMJ Group, p. 1213, ISSN  0959-8138
• Obituary: Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel. In: The Lancet . 326/1985. Elsevier, pp. 960-961, ISSN  0023-7507
• Gary E. Rice: Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel (1892–1985). In: Rose K. Rose, Carol A. Biermann: Women in the Biological Sciences: A Biobibliographic Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport 1997, ISBN 0-31-329180-2 , pp. 261-265
• Katja Weiske: The bacteriologist Emmy Klieneberger - in 1930 the first woman to qualify as a professor in Frankfurt am Main, released in 1933. In: Udo Benzenhöfer (Ed.): Ehrlich, Edinger, Goldstein et al .: Frankfurt University Doctors to Remember. Klemm & Oelschläger, Münster and Ulm 2012, ISBN 978-3-86281-034-5 , pp. 127-143

Web links

• Literature by and about Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Doctors in the Empire - Klieneberger-Nobel, Emmy (nee Klieneberger) Documentation from the Free University of Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Katja Weiske, Münster and Ulm 2012, p. 135 (see literature)