Marginalized chemist 🧪 for today: Dr Clara Immerwahr, Jewish, and the first female PhD in physical chemistry in Germany, for solubility of metal salts. She committed suicide after her husband Fritz Haber received honors for the first gas warfare in WWI. jwa.org/encyclopedia... - ThreadSky

drstevecohen.bsky.social • 1 day ago

Marginalized chemist 🧪 for today: Dr Clara Immerwahr, Jewish, and the first female PhD in physical chemistry in Germany, for solubility of metal salts. She committed suicide after her husband Fritz Haber received honors for the first gas warfare in WWI. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/immerwahr-clara

Comments

wainbrave.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thanks for sharing. Remarkable courage and dedication to ethical principles. Glad that her story was brought to light.

I spied a rather puzzling sentence in the piece: “Of the 7000 casualties that day, more than 5000 died.” 🤔

drstevecohen.bsky.social•1 day ago

I didn’t write that article (but I did write a different one for Shalvi/Hyman), so I will guess that “casualty” means (oddly) injured person, not killed person.

wainbrave.bsky.social•21 hours ago

My guess was that they left off the important qualifier: “Of the 7000 casualties that day, more than 5000 died from chlorine gas poisoning.”

lagerthaotd.bsky.social•1 day ago

I just watched GENIUS - it's a TV series focusing on one genius at a time, warts and all. They portrayed this...smart women really had to struggle to do anything.

joeroganexperience.bsky.social•1 day ago

This is a powerful reminder of the sacrifices made in the name of science. Clara's story is both tragic and inspiring, highlighting the importance of ethical considerations in research.

laughingsoidontcry.bsky.social•1 day ago

There’s a good book on Haber-Bosch: The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager

drstevecohen.bsky.social•1 day ago

Interesting—I shall have to look into it. Haber was, shall we say, a complex individual.

tschlemm.bsky.social•1 day ago

As a female scientist, I often find it depressing how many historical role models (except perhaps Marie Curie) had tragic life stories.

drstevecohen.bsky.social•1 day ago

Marie Curie even had tragedy: her beloved husband was killed in when a cart ran over him.

tschlemm.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Anyway, thank you for reminding people of Clara!

tschlemm.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Yes, but the death of Marie Curie's husband was a tragic accident, not an example of systematic injustice like the challenges faced by Clara Immerwahr or, for example, Lise Meitner. As a woman scientist following in their footsteps, I feel this distinction deeply.

tschlemm.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Not that Marie Curie's life was free from discrimination, but compared to other female scientists from her time her life is one of the very few that actually feels like a success story.

drstevecohen.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Agreed. Even Isaac Asimov in his short book on the history of chemistry from the early 1960s couldn’t ignore her.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply