Elizabeth Rona received a PhD from the University of Budapest in 1912. She spent her life studying radiation and various radioactive elements and isotopes, contributing greatly to the body of knowledge about those substances. But because of who she was, where she was, and when, she managed to miss out on the accolades that came to those she worked with. During World War I, she worked with German chemist George von Hevesy.
Rona and von Hevesy tracked how radioactive tracers moved in different materials, and used that information to predict the size and behavior of atoms. Long after Rona left his lab, von Hevesy would be awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on these tracers, recognizing their importance in studying metabolism and in diagnosing conditions like cancer and heart disease. The collaboration with von Hevesy established Rona as a key figure in the radioactivity community.
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following World War I lead to political upheaval and violence as communists and nationalists fought for control. As a Jewish member of the academy, Elizabeth Rona was an enemy to both sides – the communists hated the notion of an ivory tower, and the nationalists were suspicious of Jews, who they associated with the communist leadership.
In 1921, radiochemist Otto Hahn offered her a position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and she soon left for Berlin. Like Rona’s previous mentor, Otto Hahn would also receive a Nobel Prize long after she left the lab, this time for the discovery of nuclear fission, the reaction that fuels the atomic bomb. Hahn’s female colleague in the fission research, Lise Meitner, was snubbed.
Rona's movement from place to place continued throughout her life. It held back recognition, but not her work. Read about Elizabeth Rona, her life, and her research at Massive Science. Scroll down past the article to find links to more stories of the women of science. -via Damn Interesting