Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt (1923–2016): An instinct for poisons #

She was a professor at the University of Erlangen, held two doctorates and had five children: among other achievements, the toxicologist Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt succeeded in detecting traces of the insecticide parathion in blood, a substance once widely used for murder.

Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt (née Mallinckrodt-Haupt) was born in Potsdam on 28 April 1923. She was the eldest of five children of the head forester Johann Dietrich von Mallinckrodt and the renowned dermatologist Asta von Mallinckrodt-Haupt (1896–1960), who became Germany’s first professor of dermatology in 1941. When the Second World War broke out, Marika was visiting her grandmother in Bamberg with one of her brothers. Her mother was in the USA at the time, and her father decided that the two children should not return to Cologne, where the family was then living, because of the war. So, in March 1940, just short of her 17th birthday, she took her Abitur at the Neues Gymnasium in Bamberg. She was then conscripted into the Reich Labour Service. She dreamed of studying medicine, but this would have meant serving four more weeks in the Labour Service, which did not appeal to her at all. She therefore studied chemistry in Cologne and Munich from 1940.

In December 1942, she met Herbert Geldmacher, a civil engineer with a doctorate, whom she married in 1943. Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt sat her diploma examination in Munich in 1944. However, her subsequent doctorate made little progress. For one thing, the young chemist had by then had her first child; for another, working and living conditions in Munich were deteriorating, as both the chemistry institute and her home had been badly damaged by bombs.

Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt fled with her child to her grandmother in Bamberg, where her second child was born in 1945. At the University of Erlangen, she made another attempt at a doctorate, this time successfully, under Alwin Meuwsen, a renowned inorganic chemist. He is said to have remarked: “Mrs Geldmacher, she really did pull the wool over my eyes; she kept it from me that she had two children! If I’d known, I wouldn’t have taken her on.” Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt was awarded her doctorate on 1 July 1948.

Since, in her view, there were no jobs for women chemists in the chemical industry at the time apart from in libraries, Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt enrolled to study medicine at the University of Erlangen in 1949. In July 1954, she received a second doctorate, this time in medicine. That same year, she gave birth to her third child, followed by her fourth in 1957 and her fifth in 1966. Clearly, the twice-doctoral graduate managed to balance her career and family life. From 1954 to 1963, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Erlangen, most recently at the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminalistics. In 1964, she was granted the right to teach forensic medical chemistry; six years later she was appointed professor, and in 1978 she was awarded a C3 professorship.

With funding from the German Research Foundation, Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt developed the University of Erlangen’s forensic medicine institute, where she worked for a total of 25 years, into an important centre for clinical toxicological analysis. She won considerable recognition for developing a method to detect minute quantities of the insecticide parathion (E 605) in blood, a substance once widely used for murder and suicide. In addition to forensic toxicology and forensic and clinical toxicological analysis, ecogenetics was one of her main research areas. The field studies genetically determined responses of the human organism to environmental influences.

Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt became professor emerita in 1985. More than 130 publications and numerous textbooks testify to her prolific scientific work. In 1987, she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for her research in analysis and toxicology. Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt died in Erlangen on 23 December 2016, aged 93.

Literature
German Chemical Society (GDCh): Women chemists – they existed and still exist, 2003, p. 32

S. M. Schwarzl, Nachrichten aus der Chemie 51, 2003, p. 732