Sisters in Science

Starred review from October 28, 2024
This riveting group biography from journalist Campbell (Women in White Coats) recounts how Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen, who were among the first female physicists in Germany, survived WWII. After a 1933 Nazi law effectively banned women from university positions and pushed the four physicists out of their academic appointments, Sponer and Stücklen coordinated with sympathetic acquaintances abroad to secure teaching positions in the U.S. Kohn and Meitner, who were Jewish, faced greater obstacles, and Campbell offers nail-biting accounts of their escapes. Meitner was prevented from leaving Germany after her passport was personally revoked by Heinrich Himmler, and she relied on a cadre of fellow physicists and international refugee organizations to sneak her into Sweden. Kohn came even closer to mortal danger. In 1940, she was slipping into poverty due to years of unemployment when the Gestapo threatened to deport her to a concentration camp if she didn’t leave Germany within a month’s time. She fled after frenzied petitioning by friends in the U.S. secured her university teaching assignments there. Campbell’s skillful storytelling transforms her subjects’ escapes into pulse-pounding races against the clock while also shining a light on the overlooked heroism of the networks of professors who helped German academics flee to safety. This deserves a wide audience. Photos.