Katharina Boll-Dornberger

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Katharina Boll-Dornberger (born November 2, 1909 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died July 27, 1981 in East Berlin ), also known as Käte Dornberger-Schiff (née Schiff , formerly Dornberger , married Boll ) an Austrian - German physicist . From 1956 she worked as a professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin and from 1956 to 1968 headed the Institute for Structural Research in Berlin-Adlershof, which is part of the Research Foundation of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin . With her research she contributed to the establishment of the field of crystal structure analysis in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The concept of so-called order-disorder structures in crystallography goes back to her work .

Life

Katharina Boll-Dornberger was born in Vienna in 1909 . She studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1928 and 1929 and at the University of Göttingen from 1929 to 1933 . In 1934 she received her doctorate with a thesis on the crystal structure analysis of anhydrous zinc sulfate , which was still written in Göttingen, at the University of Vienna, where she then worked as an assistant until 1937. In the same year she emigrated to Great Britain , where she worked with Marcus Oliphant at the University of Birmingham from 1937 to 1938 , with John Desmond Bernal at the University of London from 1938 to 1939, and with the later Nobel Prize winner from 1941 to 1943 and from 1944 to 1946 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin worked at the University of Oxford . In the meantime, she taught at a girls' school in Oxford from 1943 to 1944 .

After the end of the Second World War , she returned to Germany in 1946, where she initially worked as a lecturer at the University of Architecture in Weimar from 1947 . A year later she moved to the newly founded Institute for Medicine and Biology of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW) in Berlin-Buch . She completed her habilitation in 1953 at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where she worked as a lecturer from 1954, from 1956 as a professor and from 1960 as a professor with a full teaching position in specialist areas of physics / crystallography. From 1955 to 1956 she headed the DAW's Crystal Analysis Laboratory in Berlin-Adlershof and from 1956 to 1968 she was director of the local institute for structural research. She then worked from 1968 to 1969 as research director of the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry at the DAW, where she worked as a research assistant after her retirement in 1970. She died in Berlin in 1981.

Katharina Boll-Dornberger was a member of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) from 1928 , of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1931 and of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) from 1947 .

Awards and recognition

Due to her scientific work on the structure of inorganic crystals and proteins, Katharina Boll-Dornberger is considered to be the co-founder of crystal structure analysis in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the most prominent crystallographer in the history of science in the country. She achieved international recognition through the development and introduction of the concept of so-called order-disorder structures in crystallography. She received the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1959 and the GDR National Prize one year later . A street in Berlin-Adlershof bears her name.

Works (selection)

  • Globular Protein Molecules; Their Structure and Dynamic Properties. Berlin 1960 (as co-author)
  • Fundamentals of a theory of OD structures from layers. Berlin 1964

literature

personal data
SURNAME Boll-Dornberger, Katharina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dornberger ship, Käte; Schiff, Katharina (maiden name); Dornberger, Katharina; Boll, Katharina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 1981
Place of death East Berlin