Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch

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Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch (born October 6, 1907 in Danzig ; † November 7, 2007 in New York ) was a German-American geneticist.

Life

Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch was born in Danzig in 1907 as Salome Glücksohn. She studied chemistry and zoology in Königsberg and Berlin . In 1928 she went to Hans Spemann at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg , where she received her doctorate in 1932 with a thesis on the embryonic development of the extremities of newts. In the same year she married the biochemist Rudolph Schönheimer .

In 1933 both had to emigrate to the United States as Jews . From 1936 Salome worked at Columbia University , where she stayed until 1953. Together with Leslie C. Dunn, she worked on mouse skeletal mutants, in particular on the Brachyury gene. In this work she combined the embryological tools she had acquired from Spemann with the ideas and methods of classic mouse genetics. Since then she has been considered the founder of the developmental genetics of mammals .

In 1938 she acquired American citizenship. After Schönheimer's death in 1941, she married the neurochemist Heinrich Waelsch. In 1953 she went to the newly founded Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM), where she first held a professorship for anatomy, and from 1963 to 1976 she was chairman of the genetics department. She retired in 1978, but continued working into old age. In the 1990s she published and took part in scientific conferences, at which a new generation of scientists looked for new answers to classic questions of developmental genetics using methods from experimental mouse genetics and mutations such as Brachyury could be characterized molecularly.

She received broad recognition for her work only late on; In 1979 she became a member of the National Academy of Sciences , in 1980 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1982 she honored the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg with the golden doctorate, which she accepted with reservations, and in 1993 she received the National Medal of Science from the Hand of then President Bill Clinton and in the presence of then Vice President Al Gore and in 1999 she was awarded the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal . In 1995 she became a member of the Royal Society and an honorary doctorate from Columbia University. She died a month after her hundredth birthday.

In 2010 the Freiburg Graduate School for Biology and Medicine (SGBM) awarded the Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch Prize for the best dissertation at the suggestion of the biologist Ralf Reski in cooperation with the Genetics Department of AECOM .

literature

  • Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg (ed.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Lexicon on life and work. Reinbek 1993, ISBN 3-499-16344-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ S. Fortunate Son: External limb development and staging of the larval period of Triton taeniatus Agony. and from Triton cristatus Laur. In: Wilhelm Roux 'Archiv f. Development mechanics d. Organisms. Volume 125, pp. 341-405.
  2. ^ SF Gilbert: Induction and the origins of developmental genetics. In: Dev Biol. 7, 1991, pp. 181-206. PMID 1804213 ; doi : 10.1007 / 978-1-4615-6823-0_9 , ( online ( memento from February 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  3. ^ University of Freiburg: Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch Prize awarded for the first time. Freiburg, December 21, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Gluecksohn-Waelsch, Salome
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schönheimer, Salome (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 2007
Place of death New York City