Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog Obam here. It's no secret that for centuries
Speaker 1: women have faced innumerable obstacles pursuing careers in the fields
Speaker 1: of science, technology, engineering and mathematics now sometimes known as STEM.
Speaker 1: And of course, many people have faced challenges related not
Speaker 1: only to their sex or gender, but also to their race, heritage, religion,
Speaker 1: and more. But a few of those people, like physicist
Speaker 1: head Vig Kohn, have embodied enough resilience to triumph in
Speaker 1: their chosen field. Born on April five, eighteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: in Breslau, Germany now Votswaffe, Poland, Kohn paved a unique
Speaker 1: path for herself early on, auditing at a local university
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty, a year before women were
Speaker 1: even allowed to officially enroll. In nineteen thirteen, she earned
Speaker 1: a doctorate in physics and went on to become one
Speaker 1: of just three women certified to teach the subject at
Speaker 1: any German university before World War Two. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, the Rye saying Nazi powers forced Kohn and
Speaker 1: her fellow Jewish colleagues Lisa Meitner and Harthas Bonner out
Speaker 1: of their jobs. Kohen was able to support herself through
Speaker 1: research work for the next two years, and in five
Speaker 1: she was able to take on a three month project
Speaker 1: at an observatorium in Switzerland, but the short term endeavor
Speaker 1: didn't pan out into a permanent escape from the atrocities
Speaker 1: occurring throughout Eastern Europe. In November of ninety eight, a
Speaker 1: two day terror strike known as Crystal Knock or the
Speaker 1: Night of Broken Glass took place. Nazis in Germany murdered
Speaker 1: nearly a hundred Jewish people, arrested thirty thousand men and
Speaker 1: sent them to concentration camps, and destroyed Jewish homes and businesses.
Speaker 1: Cohen knew she had to get out, but how she
Speaker 1: lacked the global acclaim that might warrant an international work visa,
Speaker 1: and most American university jobs required job applicants to have
Speaker 1: recent teaching experience, a qualification con lacked due to the
Speaker 1: Nazi imposed ban. In the same month as Crystal Knocked,
Speaker 1: a Princeton University physicist named Rudolph Laudenboard began pushing for
Speaker 1: Cohen's immigration. Anborg had directed Kohn's research in Breslau and
Speaker 1: had made a name for himself at Princeton. With the
Speaker 1: help of his initial insistence, the International Federation of University
Speaker 1: Women and the Society for the Protection of Science and
Speaker 1: Learning in London created a university position for Cohn in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, but just before she could flee, World
Speaker 1: War two officially broke out and England provoked all visas
Speaker 1: for enemy aliens. Refusing to give up hope, Kohn, Landborg
Speaker 1: and representatives from several international organizations exchanged more than seventy
Speaker 1: letters with institutions, eventually securing con job offers at three
Speaker 1: United States schools. She was granted a visa to the
Speaker 1: US via Sweden just before her only brother was deported
Speaker 1: and killed by the Nazis. Kohen eventually made it from
Speaker 1: Stockholm to Greensboro, North Carolina, in nineteen forty. She went
Speaker 1: on to spend nearly two decades teaching physics at both
Speaker 1: the Women's College of the University of North Carolina and
Speaker 1: Wellesley College in Massachusetts. When she retired in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: the German government awarded Cohen a pension and the title
Speaker 1: of Professor Emerita, but Cohen wasn't quite ready to call
Speaker 1: it quits on her career she took on a research
Speaker 1: position at Duke University studying flame spectroscopy, and in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties contributed extensively to the frameworks of plasma physics
Speaker 1: and combustion science. By the time of her death in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, Cohn had produced numerous scientific publications, written
Speaker 1: several book chapters, secured a patent, and made a lasting
Speaker 1: impact as an innovator within the stamp world and beyond.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more in this amounts of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and
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