Gertrud Kornfeld (1891–1955) Photochemistry in all its facets #

After the National Socialists revoked her teaching qualification, it was impossible for Gertrud Kornfeld to continue her university career. She emigrated to the USA and researched, in the service of photographic film manufacturer Eastman Kodak, until the end of her life.

Gertrud Kornfeld was born in Prague on 25 July 1891. The daughter of a German-speaking Bohemian family of manufacturers belonging to the upper-middle-class Jewish community, she received an excellent education. She eventually obtained the qualifications required to study by passing the Austrian school-leaving examination.

From 1910 to 1915, Kornfeld studied chemistry, physical chemistry and physics at the German-speaking Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague. From 1914, she conducted research there in the working group of her mentor Viktor Rothmund (1870–1927), whose work focused chiefly on the electrochemical reduction and so-called passivity of metals. Kornfeld was awarded her doctorate in 1915 for a thesis on “Hydrates in solution” and worked as an assistant at the Prague University’s chemical institute until 1918 or 1919 (see note below). With the outbreak of the First World War, women scientists were finally allowed to take up academic posts at several German universities. During this period, Kornfeld deepened her knowledge of chemical reaction kinetics, then an emerging field of research.

As Kornfeld belonged to Prague’s German-speaking population, she left the city in 1919 when Czechoslovakia was founded. As a former assistant to Rothmund, she was immediately offered a research assistant position with Max Bodenstein (1871–1942) at the Technical University of Hanover, where she remained until 1923 or 1925 (see note below). Bodenstein is considered one of the founders of chemical reaction kinetics. His research focused particularly on light-induced chain reactions such as the chlorine explosion reaction, in which hydrogen chloride is formed from its elements. He also made other important contributions to photochemistry. Both fields—photochemistry and reaction kinetics—now became Kornfeld’s main areas of research too.

In 1923, Bodenstein was appointed to a post in Berlin as successor to Nobel Prize winner Walther Nernst (1864–1941), and Kornfeld moved with him to the university’s physical chemistry institute. In 1928, she completed her habilitation in chemistry in Berlin. She remained Bodenstein’s assistant, supervised several doctoral theses and fulfilled her teaching duties with great enthusiasm. Kornfeld also enjoyed success in research: around 1929, she developed the membrane manometer, which measures pressures of up to 16 millibars. It works by using gas pressure to bend a thin sheet of metal, thereby moving a pointer.

Alongside her achievements, Kornfeld faced many disappointments and frustrations that ultimately made a university career impossible. After the National Socialists revoked her teaching qualification in autumn 1933, the chemist, by then 42, travelled unexpectedly to England with the help of a scholarship. She conducted research at the University of Nottingham and Imperial College London, but did not secure a permanent position. She never attained the relatively senior position in academia that she had once held in Berlin in Great Britain. Supported by another scholarship, she worked at the University of Vienna until 1936. From there, she emigrated to the USA in 1937 on a visitor’s visa.

Kornfeld was also unable to pursue a university career in the United States. She took up a position as a research chemist at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York State. She worked for the manufacturer of film and other photographic equipment until the end of her life. In 1943, Kornfeld became an American citizen. She never married.

Kornfeld experienced both the academic and industrial sides of her profession and is undoubtedly one of the outstanding women chemists of the first half of the 20th century. Her early research was pioneering in photochemistry, but she was unable to build on these successes in later life. Gertrud Kornfeld died in Rochester, USA, in the summer of 1955, just a few weeks before her 64th birthday.

Literature
A. Vogt: Vom Hintereingang zum Hauptportal? Lise Meitner und ihre Kolleginnen an der Berliner Universität und in der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2007

H. Walter: Kornfeld, Gertrud. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), Band 12, S. 590, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1980

https://fakultaeten.hu-berlin.de/de/sprachlit/frauenbeauftragte/weitere-informationen/der_lange_weg_z_chancengleichheit_2014.pdf

Note: different sources give different details