Stephanie Horovitz

Stephanie Horovitz (also Stefanie ; born April 17, 1887 in Warsaw , Russian Empire ; died 1942 in the Treblinka extermination camp ) was a Polish - Jewish chemist and psychologist .

Life

Horovitz was the daughter of the painter Leopold Horovitz . From 1907 she studied at the University of Vienna , where she obtained a doctorate in chemistry from Guido Goldschmiedt in 1914 with a thesis on regrouping quinones under sulfuric acid . From around 1913/1914 she was part of Otto Hönigschmid's group at the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna, while he was already a professor at the German Technical University in Prague .

For Hönigschmid, Horovitz determined the atomic weight of lead from radioactive sources, especially pitchblende from Joachimsthal, with great diligence and great precision . With the specific atomic weight of lead from Joachimsthaler pitchblende of 206.736 compared to 207.190 for “normal” lead, the previous concept of an invariability of atomic weights was shaken. The results were confirmed on material from Norway ("Bröggerit"), which probably came from Ellen Gleditsch , and other samples. Hönigschmid's teacher Theodore William Richards was also able to reproduce the results of Hönigschmid and Horovitz. As a result, Horovitz turned to the "ionium", which was initially thought to be an element of its own, but for which she was able to prove that it is an isotope of thorium . These were the last scientific publications by Stephanie Horovitz.

After the end of the First World War , Horovitz left chemistry and turned to Alfred Adler's group and individual psychology. Together with Alice Friedmann , she opened a home for children and young adults based on individual psychology in Vienna.

In 1937 - after the death of her parents - Horovitz moved to live with her sister in Warsaw. After the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto (1940), both were initially able to flee from it. In order not to endanger the people with whom they had hidden, they reported at the Umschlagplatz at the Warsaw Ghetto when the Nazis ordered the "resettlement" of the Jews to the East in 1942. Stephanie Horovitz and her sister were in the Treblinka extermination camp deported and murdered.

literature

• Marelene F. Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham: Stefanie Horovitz: A Crucial Role in the Discovery of Isotopes. In: Devotion to Their Science: Pioneer Women of Radioactivity. McGill-Queen's Press 1997. pp. 192–195 ISBN 9780773516083 ( limited preview in Google book search)
• Marelene F. Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham: Stefanie Horovitz, Ellen Gleditsch, Ada Hitchins, and the discovery of isotopes. In: Bulletin for the History of Chemistry. 2000, Vol. 25 (2), pp. 103-108. (PDF, 747 kB)
• Maria Rentetzi: Stephanie Horovitz (1887–1942). In: Jan Apotheker, Livia Simon Sarkadi (Ed.): European women in chemistry. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH 2011. pp. 75-79. ISBN 978-3-527-32956-4 DOI: 10.1002 / 9783527636457.ch19 ( limited preview in Google book search)
• Brigitte Bischof, Clara Kenner: Horovitz, Stefanie. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 310-312.