Berta Scharrer

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Berta Vogel Scharrer (December 1, 1906 – July 23, 1995) was a German-born American scientist who helped to found the scientific discipline now known as neuroendocrinology.^[1]

Legacy

Scharrer's studies of invertebrates, particularly the cockroach, was so extensive that her name was given to an entire species of cockroach, known as the Escala scharrerae, found in Australasia. ^[2]

Career

Berta Vogel was born in Munich, Germany, to Johanna Weiss Vogel and Karl Phillip Vogel, who served as vice-president of the federal court of Bavaria. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Munich. She worked at the university with Prof. Karl von Frisch, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for his work with bees. Berta Scharrer was forced to emigrate at the onset of the Holocaust. She arrived with her husband, Ernst Scharrer, in the United States with a total of eight dollars. Despite discrimination against women scientists at the time she eventually got a professorship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a branch of Yeshiva University, in September 1955.^[2]

Death

She remained at Einstein College until her retirement in 1995, five months before her death at age 88. Her husband had died in 1965 in a swimming accident. They had no children.

Honors

She earned honorary degrees from various universities, including Harvard, "as well as a nomination for a Nobel Prize for her pioneering research in brain chemicals".

Bibliography

• Neuropeptides and immunoregulation (1994) New York City, ISBN 0-387-57188-4
• Functional morphology of neuroendocrine systems : evolutionary and environmental aspects (1995) New York City, ISBN 0-387-18155-5
• Handbuch der mikroskopischen Anatomie des Menschen, Bd. 6., Blutgefäss- und Lymphgefässapparat: Innersekretorische Drüsen T. 5., Die Nebenniere. Neurosekretion (1954)
• The structure of the ring-gland (Corpus allatum) in normal and lethal larvae of Drosophila melanogaster (1938), Washington, D.C.

References

External links

• Laudation to Berta Scharrer: On the occasion of her eightieth birthday
• Tribute to Prof. Berta Scharrer on her 85th birthday
• Berta Scharrer in the German National Library catalogue (German)