Mathilde Carmen Hertz (14 January 1891 – 20 November 1975) was a biologist, and was one of the first influential women scientists in the field of biology and a pioneer in the field of comparative psychology. Working in Germany, her career started to unravel in 1933 due to her

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

ancestry.Kressley RA, Jaeger S. 2003. Rediscovering a missing link: The sensory physiologist and comparative psychologist Mathilde Hertz (1891-1975). ''History of Psychology'' 6(4): 379-396. DOI:10.1037/1093-4510.6.4.379 She was the younger daughter of the famous physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

Biography

Mathilde Hertz was born on 14 January 1891 in

Bonn, Germany The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr ...

. Her father,

Heinrich Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( ; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. The unit ...

, died in 1894 when Mathilde Hertz was still very young. Hertz was born into a wealthy and well-educated family. After finishing secondary schooling, she received training in fine arts and worked as a sculptor. One of her first jobs involved reconstructing fossilized teeth at the

German Museum The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from ...

. Ludwig Doederlein noticed her work and encouraged her to enroll at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

for doctoral studies in 1921. In 1925 she completed a doctoral degree based on the analysis of primitive mammalian teeth.Hertz M. 1925. Beobachtungen an Primitiven Saeugetiergebissen. Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Ökologie der Tiere 4: 540-584 Once finished with her dissertation, she focused her attention on a different area. Influenced by renowned animal psychologist Wolfgang Koehler, she moved into the area of animal psychology. She moved to the

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (German: ''Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften'') was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over by ...

in Berlin, Germany, where she undertook much of her subsequent studies. With the help of

Richard Goldschmidt Richard Benedict Goldschmidt (April 12, 1878 – April 24, 1958) was a German-born American geneticist. He is considered the first to attempt to integrate genetics, development, and evolution. He pioneered understanding of reaction norms, gen ...

, she overcame gender barriers and started running her own laboratory in Berlin. Here, in 1929, she completed a post-doctoral degree studying the optical fields of honeybees.Satzinger H. 2009. ''Differenz und Vererbung''. Cologne, Germany: Boehlau Wolfgang Koehler was one of her post-doctoral committee members. Hertz continued laboratory work and lecturing after her post-doc until her career began to unravel in 1933. Under the newly elected Nazi regime, she was forced to give up teaching due to her Jewish ancestry. Both

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

and Wolfgang Koehler spoke out for her and so she was allowed to continue laboratory work for a few years.MacRakies K. 1993. ''Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany.'' New York, USA: Oxford University Press After turning down an offer from Columbia University to come to the United States, she emigrated to the United Kingdom and continued her research at

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

in 1935. In England, however, she was more known for her famous father and not so much for her own work.Jaeger, S. (1996). Vom erklärbaren, doch ungeklärten Abbruch einer Karriere – DieTierpsychologin und Sinnesphysiologin Mathilde Hertz (1891-1975). In Gundlach H. (ed.), Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Psychologie und der Psychotechnik. Munich, Germany: Profil Verlag. Pp. 229-262 After only two years at Cambridge University she stopped publishing and disappeared from the public spotlight. Unwilling to accept charity based on her family ties, she died in poverty in 1975.

Work

Mathilde Hertz concentrated on primitive mammalian teeth for her doctoral thesis. Once she received her doctoral degree, however, Hertz moved away from studying teeth and focused on animal psychology. She initially concentrated on the behavior of ravens. She was specifically interested in the

visual perception Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding Biophysical environment, environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the ...

of these birds. Her findings are valued for many reasons. Among others, she published important findings explaining problem-solving in animals. In the years following, she focused primarily on the visual perception of honeybees Other animals she studied include blue jays, hermit crabs, and flies.

Family legacy

Mathilde Hertz, who herself never had children, came from a well-known family of scientists. Her father Heinrich Rudolf Hertz is famous for proving the existence of electromagnetic radio waves. Her cousin,

Gustav Ludwig Hertz Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. Biography Hertz was born in Hamb ...

, studied under

among others and was awarded the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

for his work in the field of nuclear physics in 1925.The Nobel Prize in Physics 1925: James Franck, Gustav Hertz
/ref> Gustav Ludwig Hertz’s son Carl Hellmuth Hertz, in turn, developed medical ultrasonography at the

University of Lund , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Sweden.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hertz, Mathilde Carmen Scientists from Bonn 1891 births 1975 deaths 20th-century German biologists 20th-century German women scientists Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom