Education
At the University of Munich Gertrude quickly developed an interest in physics. Although her family had supported her early interested in science, her father encouraged her to study law at Munich. In defense of her decision to study physics Gertrude told her father, “I’m not interested in the law. I want to understand what the world is made of.”
As was usual for students at the time, Gertrude spent semesters at various other universities including the University of Freiburg, the University of Zurich, and the University of Berlin (where she would meet her future husband) before returning to the University of Munich. Upon returning to Munich Gertrude took up a position with Walter Gerlach to perform her thesis research. In her thesis Gertrude studied the effects of stress on magnetization. She graduated in 1935 and published her thesis in 1936.
With the rise to power of the Nazi party in 1933, Gertrude faced increasing difficulties in Germany because of her Jewish heritage. During this time her father was arrested and jailed, and although he and his wife were able to flee to Switzerland upon his release, they later returned to Germany and perished in the The Holocaust. Gertrude remained in Germany until the completion of her Ph.D. in 1935, at which point she fled to London. Although Gertrude's parents did not escape the Nazis her sister Liselotte did.
Read more about this topic: Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line.... Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the “blocking” techniques, the outright prohibitions, the “no’s” and go heavy on “substitution” techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)