WEBVTT - Who Was Physicist Hedwig Kohn?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.080
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.799
<v Speaker 1>Lauren bog Obam here. It's no secret that for centuries

0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.360
<v Speaker 1>women have faced innumerable obstacles pursuing careers in the fields

0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:19.480
<v Speaker 1>of science, technology, engineering and mathematics now sometimes known as STEM.

0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.560
<v Speaker 1>And of course, many people have faced challenges related not

0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.160
<v Speaker 1>only to their sex or gender, but also to their race, heritage, religion,

0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.360
<v Speaker 1>and more. But a few of those people, like physicist

0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.600
<v Speaker 1>head Vig Kohn, have embodied enough resilience to triumph in

0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:37.080
<v Speaker 1>their chosen field. Born on April five, eighteen eighty seven,

0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:41.400
<v Speaker 1>in Breslau, Germany now Votswaffe, Poland, Kohn paved a unique

0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.599
<v Speaker 1>path for herself early on, auditing at a local university

0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:46.640
<v Speaker 1>at the age of twenty, a year before women were

0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.520
<v Speaker 1>even allowed to officially enroll. In nineteen thirteen, she earned

0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:52.479
<v Speaker 1>a doctorate in physics and went on to become one

0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.800
<v Speaker 1>of just three women certified to teach the subject at

0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:58.760
<v Speaker 1>any German university before World War Two. But in nineteen

0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.760
<v Speaker 1>thirty three, the Rye saying Nazi powers forced Kohn and

0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.039
<v Speaker 1>her fellow Jewish colleagues Lisa Meitner and Harthas Bonner out

0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:08.040
<v Speaker 1>of their jobs. Kohen was able to support herself through

0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.160
<v Speaker 1>research work for the next two years, and in five

0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.160
<v Speaker 1>she was able to take on a three month project

0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.880
<v Speaker 1>at an observatorium in Switzerland, but the short term endeavor

0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:19.520
<v Speaker 1>didn't pan out into a permanent escape from the atrocities

0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:24.319
<v Speaker 1>occurring throughout Eastern Europe. In November of ninety eight, a

0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.039
<v Speaker 1>two day terror strike known as Crystal Knock or the

0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:30.679
<v Speaker 1>Night of Broken Glass took place. Nazis in Germany murdered

0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:33.640
<v Speaker 1>nearly a hundred Jewish people, arrested thirty thousand men and

0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.920
<v Speaker 1>sent them to concentration camps, and destroyed Jewish homes and businesses.

0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:40.440
<v Speaker 1>Cohen knew she had to get out, but how she

0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.680
<v Speaker 1>lacked the global acclaim that might warrant an international work visa,

0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.120
<v Speaker 1>and most American university jobs required job applicants to have

0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.600
<v Speaker 1>recent teaching experience, a qualification con lacked due to the

0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:54.480
<v Speaker 1>Nazi imposed ban. In the same month as Crystal Knocked,

0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.200
<v Speaker 1>a Princeton University physicist named Rudolph Laudenboard began pushing for

0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:02.560
<v Speaker 1>Cohen's immigration. Anborg had directed Kohn's research in Breslau and

0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.440
<v Speaker 1>had made a name for himself at Princeton. With the

0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.760
<v Speaker 1>help of his initial insistence, the International Federation of University

0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:10.960
<v Speaker 1>Women and the Society for the Protection of Science and

0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:14.360
<v Speaker 1>Learning in London created a university position for Cohn in

0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.880
<v Speaker 1>nineteen thirty nine, but just before she could flee, World

0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:21.160
<v Speaker 1>War two officially broke out and England provoked all visas

0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:26.359
<v Speaker 1>for enemy aliens. Refusing to give up hope, Kohn, Landborg

0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:30.400
<v Speaker 1>and representatives from several international organizations exchanged more than seventy

0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:34.200
<v Speaker 1>letters with institutions, eventually securing con job offers at three

0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.120
<v Speaker 1>United States schools. She was granted a visa to the

0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.600
<v Speaker 1>US via Sweden just before her only brother was deported

0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.480
<v Speaker 1>and killed by the Nazis. Kohen eventually made it from

0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:48.359
<v Speaker 1>Stockholm to Greensboro, North Carolina, in nineteen forty. She went

0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.000
<v Speaker 1>on to spend nearly two decades teaching physics at both

0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.600
<v Speaker 1>the Women's College of the University of North Carolina and

0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.800
<v Speaker 1>Wellesley College in Massachusetts. When she retired in nineteen fifty two,

0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:00.560
<v Speaker 1>the German government awarded Cohen a pension and the title

0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:04.440
<v Speaker 1>of Professor Emerita, but Cohen wasn't quite ready to call

0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:06.960
<v Speaker 1>it quits on her career she took on a research

0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.600
<v Speaker 1>position at Duke University studying flame spectroscopy, and in the

0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:14.520
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixties contributed extensively to the frameworks of plasma physics

0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:17.639
<v Speaker 1>and combustion science. By the time of her death in

0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.919
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixty four, Cohn had produced numerous scientific publications, written

0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:25.040
<v Speaker 1>several book chapters, secured a patent, and made a lasting

0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.200
<v Speaker 1>impact as an innovator within the stamp world and beyond.

0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:36.360
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was written by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by

0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:39.120
<v Speaker 1>Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's

0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:41.440
<v Speaker 1>How Stuff Works. For more in this amounts of other topics,

0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.000
<v Speaker 1>visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and

0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:46.360
<v Speaker 1>for more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart

0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:48.960
<v Speaker 1>Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:49.680
<v Speaker 1>favorite shows.