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[Identification of item], Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner Autograph Book and Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
The Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner Autograph Book and Papers were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library as a transfer in 2011.
Processed by Willeke Sandler, March 2012
Encoded by Willeke Sandler, April 2012
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This finding aid is NCEAD compliant.
Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner (1871-1935) was a bacteriologist who studied tuberculosis. She was born in Kovno, Lithuania and studied in Zurich and Bern. In 1912, she became the first woman in Berlin and the second woman in Prussia to reach the rank of Professor. Rabinowitsch-Kempner worked with Robert Koch at the Institute for Infectious Diseases (
Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner married Walter Kempner, another assistant to Robert Koch, in 1898 and had two sons, Walter Kempner and Robert Kempner, and a daughter. Walter Kempner came to Duke Medical Center in 1933 and Robert Kempner was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner died in Berlin in 1935.
The Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner Autograph Book and Papers date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century, and contain letters written to Rabinowitsch-Kempner from leading German scientists. Correspondents include Robert and Hedwig Koch, Paul Ehrlich, Emil Behring, Richard Pfeiffer, and Alexandre Besredka, as well as calling cards with notations from Lord Joseph Lister, Elie (Ilija) Metchnikoff, and Albert Calmette. Many of the letters and calling cards are arranged in a scrapbook, and relate to personal as well as professional matters. The collection also contains a series of six letters from Max von Pettenkofer to Paul Lindau, editor of
Acquired as part of the History of Medicine Collections at Duke University.
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Contains letters from several correspondents and three photographs of Robert Koch, Emil Behring, and Paul Ehrlich. The Behring and Ehrlich photographs are autographed to Rabinowitsch-Kempner. The scrapbook contains letters to Rabinowitsch-Kempner from Robert and Hedwig Koch, Paul Ehrlich, Emil von Behring, and Richard Pfeiffer, as well as calling cards with notations from Lord Joseph Lister, Elie Metchnikoff, Albert Calmette, and Amedée Borrel.