Sophia Getzowa

Sophia Getzowa (, 10 January 1872 (O.S.)/23 January 1872 (N. S.) – 11(12) July 1946) was a Belarusian-born pathologist and scientist in Mandatory Palestine. She grew up in a Jewish shtetl in Belarus and during her medical studies at the University of Bern, she became engaged to Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel. Together they worked in the Zionist movement. After a four-year romance, Weizmann broke off their engagement and Getzowa returned to her medical studies, graduating in 1904. She carried out widely cited research on the thyroid, identifying solid cell nests (SCN) in 1907.

Because of her status as a Jew, a woman, and a foreigner, Getzowa's employment status was unstable. She worked through the 1920s in various locations in Switzerland and also briefly in Paris. In 1925, after a recommendation from Albert Einstein, she was hired to work as a pathologist in the yet to be created Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she would become the first female professor in 1927. She collaborated with a wide range of European scientists over the remainder of her career, before her retirement in 1940. Provided by Wikipedia