Anita Agatha Kurmann (November 22, 1976 – August 7, 2015)[1][2] was a Swiss endocrinologist and thyroid surgeon. Life Anita studied medicine in Basel and worked at the Inselspital in Bern, then moved to Boston to train in research at the Beth Israel Deaconess hospital, where she was a post-doctoral fellow.[3][4] She worked with a multi-institution group based at Boston University[5] that was the first to generate thyroid cell progenitors and thyroid follicular organoids from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) in mice, and thyroid cell progenitors from induced PSCs in humans.[5] This was achieved by establishing the signalling required to create a…
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Catherine Bandle (born 22 March 1943)[1] is a Swiss mathematician known for her research on differential equations, including semilinear elliptic equations and reaction-diffusion equations, and for her book on isoperimetric inequalities. She is a professor emerita of mathematics at the University of Basel.[2] Education and career Bandle completed her doctorate (Dr. math.) at ETH Zurich in 1971. Her dissertation, Konstruktion isoperimetrischer Ungleichungen der mathematischen Physik aus solchen der Geometrie, concerned isoperimetric inequalities and was jointly supervised by Joseph Hersch and Alfred Huber.[3][1] Like Alice Roth before her, she received the ETH Silver Medal for her dissertation, and she continued at…
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Kitty Ponse (5 September 1897 – 10 February 1982) was a Swiss zoologist and endocrinologist. She was a professor at the University of Geneva and received the Swiss Otto Naegeli Prize in 1961. Life and career Ponse was born in Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies, to Dutch parents in 1897.[1][2] At the age of eight she and her family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where she later studied science at the University of Geneva.[3] She completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Geneva in 1922 that focused on embryological development.[4] While the focus of her earlier research…
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Erna Hamburger (14 September 1911 – 15 May 1988) was a Swiss engineer and professor. In 1957, she became professor of electrometry at the University of Lausanne. She was the first woman in the history of Switzerland to be named a professor at a STEM university.[1][2][3] Early life and education Hamburger was born on 14 September 1911, in Brussels, Belgium to Frederick and Else Müller. She went to secondary school in Kissingen, Bavaria. She first started secondary school at an all-girls’ school, and then moved on to be the only girl in her engineering classes.[4] In 1933, Hamburger received an…
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Elisabeth Ettlinger, FSA (née Lachmann; 14 July 1915 – 21 March 2012) was a German-born archaeologist and academic, who specialised in archaeology of the Roman provinces and Roman Switzerland. From 1964 to 1980, she taught at the University of Bern, having emigrated to Switzerland in the 1930s to escape Nazi Germany. Her research centred on Roman ceramics such as Terra Sigillata, and she co-founded Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautores, a learned society dedicated to Roman pottery: she was its secretary, vice-president and then served as its president from 1971 to 1980. From September 1963 to June 1964, she was a member…
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Jolande Jacobi (25 March 1890 – 1 April 1973) was a Swiss psychologist, best remembered for her work with Carl Jung, and for her writings on Jungian psychology. Life and career Born in Budapest, Hungary (then under Austria-Hungary) as Jolande Szekacs, she became known as Jolande Jacobi after her marriage at the age of nineteen to Andor Jacobi.[1] She spent part of her life in Budapest (until 1919), part in Vienna (until 1938) and part in Zurich. Her parents were Jewish, but Jacobi converted first to the Reformed faith (in 1911), later in life to Roman Catholicism (in 1934).[2] Jacobi…
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Verena Meyer (4 June 1929 – 21 July 2018) was a Swiss nuclear physicist and former President of the University of Zurich. She was the first woman elected to serve as president of the Swiss Physical Society. Early life Meyer was born to academic parents in 1929. Her father, Karl Meyer, was a professor of history at the University of Zurich and her mother, Alice Meyer, was a lawyer.[1] Her father died when she was 20 years old.[2] Career She originally entered medical school, but eventually switch to physics at the University of Zurich.[3] She was influenced to make the…
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Gertrude “Trudi” Duby Blom (born Gertrude Elisabeth Lörtscher; July 7, 1901 – December 23, 1993) [1] was a Swiss journalist, social anthropologist, and documentary photographer who spent five decades chronicling the Mayan cultures of Chiapas, Mexico, particularly the culture of the Lacandon Maya. In later life, she also became an environmental activist. Blom’s former home Casa Na Bolom is a research and cultural center devoted to the protection and preservation of the Lacandon Maya and La Selva Lacandona rain forest.[2] Europe 1901-1940 Gertrude Blom was born in the Swiss Alps, in the canton of Bern, Switzerland. She grew up in…
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Jolande Jacobi (25 March 1890 – 1 April 1973) was a Swiss psychologist, best remembered for her work with Carl Jung, and for her writings on Jungian psychology. Life and career Born in Budapest, Hungary (then under Austria-Hungary) as Jolande Szekacs, she became known as Jolande Jacobi after her marriage at the age of nineteen to Andor Jacobi.[1] She spent part of her life in Budapest (until 1919), part in Vienna (until 1938) and part in Zurich. Her parents were Jewish, but Jacobi converted first to the Reformed faith (in 1911), later in life to Roman Catholicism (in 1934).[2] Jacobi…
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Bärbel Elisabeth Inhelder (15 April 1913 – 17 February 1997) was a Swiss psychologist most known for her work under psychologist and epistemologist Jean Piaget and their contributions toward child development. Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, Inhelder initially showed interest in education. While attending high school she became interested in Sigmund Freud’s writing and information on adolescents. She then moved to Geneva where she studied at the University of Geneva Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau earning her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees both in psychology. Inhelder continued her work at the University of Geneva up until her retirement. During her time at Geneva,…