Co-founder of Developmental Genetics
Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch *1907–2007
In Deutschland hieß es immer: Sie sind eine Frau und eine Jüdin, Sie können es vergessen. In Amerika sagte man mir: Sie sind eine Frau, also vergessen Sie es!
Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch, co-founder of developmental genetics, was born in what was then called Danzig in 1907. She studied chemistry and zoology in Königs-berg and Berlin before joining Hans Spemann’s laboratory at the University of Freiburg in 1928. Despite facing discrimination as a Jewish woman, she received her doctorate in 1932. She married Rudolph Schönheimer and the couple fled to New York in 1933.
In 1936 she became a lecturer at Columbia University, where she worked in Leslie C. Dunn’s laboratory. In 1938 she acquired U.S. citizenship. Following Schön-heimer’s death in 1941, she married neurochemist Heinrich Waelsch in 1943, with whom she had two children.
Despite a lauded and pivotal paper on developmental genetics in 1938 and a series of remarkable papers analyzing several developmen-tal relevant genes, Gluecksohn-Waelsch was poorly paid and had no prospects of promotion. She therefore accepted a teaching position at the anatomy depart-ment of the newly founded Albert Einstein College of Medicine, becoming a full professor in 1958. She established and held the chair in molecular genetics from 1963 till 1976 and became professor emerita in 1978. However, she continued researching until the 1990s, finally passing away in 2007.
She received multiple awards for her scientific work, including the U.S. National Medal of Science, and attained membership of the Royal Society of London.