The Women’s Stories
Hilda Geiringer was one of the four lucky women who was granted aid by the Committee in 1938. Dr. Geiringer was a highly prestigious Mathematician in Austria and Germany. She had just been proposed for the position of extraordinary professor at her university when the Nazi’s came to power. The offer was withdrawn, and Geiringer was dismissed. However, she became Professor of Mathematics in Istanbul where she began pioneering work later applied to the field of Genetics.
Once in America, Dr. Geiringer helped with war work and eventually settled in Harvard. However, before this, she faced discrimination. “I am sure that our President would not approve of a woman. We have some women on our staff, so it is not merely prejudice against women, yet it is partly that, for we do not want to bring in more if we can get men,” explained one reply to Geiringer’s failed job application.
On the other hand, the committee refused nuclear scientist, Elizabeth Rona. A Doctor of Chemistry, Geochemistry, and Physics, she was the first woman to teach chemistry at university level in Hungary and a pioneer in nuclear science. In 1933, she was jointly awarded the Haitinger prize for her work on uranium, thorium, and actinium. In 1941, after being refused a Committee grant, she fled to America using an ordinary visitor’s permit. Rona spent three months unemployed and suspected of being a spy before securing work at Trinity College Washington. In 1942, she was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, as the government wanted to use her method of Polonium extraction.
Rona remained in the US and carved out a notable career. However, the states did not work out for everyone. Eugenia Bassani, an Italian chemist, was another female scientist who made it to America without the help of the committee. Bassani worked in hospital clinical laboratories across the USA until in 1948 she returned to Italy and became the director of her own lab.
Other promising women never made it to the USA. Assistant professor of mathematics, Nedda Friberti was refused aid by the committee. Although she did manage to escape Italy, it was to become a refugee in Switzerland. Some women were denied even that. In 1934 and 1938-1940, the committee rejected Austrian biologist Leonore Brecher. Finally, she settled as a schoolteacher in a Jewish community- only to be deported in 1942 to Maly Trostinez extermination camp, where she was murdered four days after her arrival.
On the face of it, these women could be seen to be the victims of their sex. However, their experience was a symptom of a more comprehensive problem- that affected and came from attitudes in the US itself.