Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner

Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner

Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner (22 August 1871 – 3 August 1935) was a Jewish bacteriologist and physician, known for her research on tuberculosis and public health. She was the second woman to become a Professor in Prussia.

Biography

Lydia Rabinowitsch was born at Kovno, Russian Empire (now Kaunas, Lithuania). She was educated at the girls' gymnasium in Kovno, and privately in Latin and Greek, subsequently studying natural sciences at the universities of Zurich and Bern (MD). After graduation she went to Berlin, where Professor Robert Koch permitted her to pursue her bacteriological studies at the Institute for Infectious Diseases. She became the second woman in Prussia employed as a professor, and the first in Berlin.

In 1895, she went to Philadelphia, where she was appointed lecturer and, subsequently, professor at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. There she founded a bacteriological institute, though still continuing her studies every summer under Professor Koch in Berlin.

In 1896, she delivered before the International Congress of Women at Berlin a lecture on the study of medicine by women in various countries. At the congress of scientists held at Breslau in 1904 she presided over the section for hygiene and bacteriology.

Rabinowitsch’s research focused around the transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis by dairy products; her work with her husband led to the development of Freund adjuvant. She was a supporter of the newly invented BCG vaccine.

Kaiser Wilhelm II honoured her with the title of Professor in 1912, but this led to an anti-Semitic backlash in the press; she was unable to gain an academic position in Berlin. However, she went on to become Director of the bacteriological laboratory at the Berlin Moabit Hospital from 1918 to 1933; she then spent one year as editor of the Journal of Tuberculosis.

Family

In April 1898, she married microbiologist Dr Walter Kempner (1869-1920) of Berlin, and returned to that city. Their first son was the jurist Robert Kempner (1899-1993). Their younger son, Dr Walter Kempner Jr. (1903-1997), was also a medical doctor. He was known for his rice diet. A daughter, Nadja Kempner, died from tuberculosis in 1932.

Headstone at the graves of Rabinowitsch-Kempner, her husband, daughter and son Robert, Parkfriedhof Lichterfelde, Berlin.

She died in 1935 in Berlin, aged 63, from undisclosed causes.

Bibliography

• Anna Plothow. Der Weltspiegel, October 27, 1904
• Deutsche Hausfrauenzeitung, July 1897, by Isidore Singer & Regina Neisser
• Beiträge zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Fruchtkörper einiger Gastromyceten, L Rabinowitsch, 1894

Sources

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) [1]