Prof. Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner, famous Jewish woman bacteriologist and associate of Prof. Robert Koch in many of his most important investigations, died here on Saturday. She was 64, and had been ill a long time.
Dr. Rabinowitsch-Kempner was the first woman ever to hold the title of professor in Prussia. She was renowned as a specialist in the bacteriology of tuberculosis.
Dr. Rabinowitsch-Kempner was born at Kovno, Russia, on Aug. 22, 1871, daughter of the merchant Leo Rabinowitsch and Minna Werblunsky Rabinowitsch. She was educated at the girls’ Gymnasium of her home town and studied natural sciences at the Universities of Zurich and Berne, Switzerland. She was graduated in 1894, took her doctor’s degree, and joined the Institute for Infectious Diseases at Berlin, where, under the direction of Prof. Koch, discoverer of the tubercle bacillus, she was engaged in researches of the influence of heat on bacteria and pathogenic yeast specimen.
She lectured at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896.
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