Olivia Campbell is a journalist, essayist, and New York Times bestselling author. I am thrilled to have this chance to interview Campbell about her new book, Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History , published by HarperCollins in December 2024. In this interview, we explore the book, her research process, and the role that collections from AIP’s Niels Bohr Library and Archives played in shaping this story.
Trevor Owens: In the book you weave together stories of physicists Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen. You explore the course of their education and careers in physics and their respective escapes from the Nazi Germany. How and where did you get the idea to tell these women’s stories together? What do we learn by exploring their stories together as opposed to individually?
Olivia Campbell: I found these women’s names in a Northeastern University research project aimed at uncovering the stories of refugee scholars of the Nazi era. My initial idea when digging into this amazing cache of data was to find a story of a woman scientist who managed to flee to safety and juxtaposition it with the story of one who didn’t, who was murdered by the Nazis. Instead, I found these four women who were all physicists and who all knew each other and helped each other escape. I prefer to tell group histories in my books because rather than a single biography, it can illuminate a meaningful section of where these lives overlapped, a snapshot of how they shaped each other’s stories.
TO: Throughout the book you document the significant obstacles that Kohn, Meitner, Sponer, and Stücklen overcame. You argue that their success “hinged on the cultivation of a scientific sisterhood of women physicists.” Could you tell us a bit about that sisterhood and how you came to understand it through your research?
OC: These women’s stories were incredibly unique. There were so few women scientists in Germany at the time, let alone physicists, and to then be fired and forced to flee the country, well, it was a very specific experience that only a few women had. They understood what they were all going through in a way no one else could. After they got out, they all also felt a special pull to help their fellow physicists who were still trying to get out of Germany, fellow female physicists in particular.
TO: You include seven photos from AIP’s visual archives , five of which I’ve included in this interview. What do these photos add to our understanding of these women’s stories?
OC: I was so happy to have been able to include photos in this book. I think it provides not only important information about my subjects’ appearance and personality, but what their laboratories looked like, who their colleagues were. I found the group photos important because they illustrate how often these women found themselves surrounded by men in professional settings. The photo of James Franck’s farewell party at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute is one of my favorites as it shows Franck with his first wife, sitting with his close friend and colleague Lise Meitner and looking across to his long-time research assistant and future second wife Hertha Sponer. Plus, Einstein is there perched alongside them. It’s such a fun moment.
(1) Hertha Sponer (2) Hugo Grotrian(3) Wilhelm Westphal(4) Otto von Bayer(5) Peter Pringsheim(6) Gustav Hertz(7) Fritz Haber(8) Otto Hahn(9) Lise Meitner(10) James Franck(11) Ingrid Franck (wife of James Franck)(12) Albert Einstein
TO: Midway through the book, you describe a moment from Hedwig Kohn’s visit to Lise Meitner in Stockholm. Meitner pulls out a thick folder containing all the correspondence Meitner had been engaged in to support Kohn’s escape. You describe that folder as “an incredible sight: the physical embodiment of care and hard work, proof that people all around the world—friends and strangers alike—did whatever they could to save her life.” Could you tell us a bit about the experience of encountering and exploring this folder, and any others in your research process, that have really stuck with you?
OC: I found that detail in a letter Hedwig wrote where she described the experience of Lise pulling out the folder. It was such an impactful moment, for her to see the stacks of correspondence related to the attempt to rescue her—and this would’ve just been on Lise’s side in Sweden; who knows what similar folders looked like at American aid agencies or at Franck or Hertha’s house. So many people were reaching out to so many funding agencies, colleges, governments, wealthy or prominent individuals—just anyone they could think of because they knew the clock was ticking for Hedwig’s deportation. Reading these letters, especially ones between the women, was a really incredible experience. They really confided in each other and left a lot of detail about what they went through once it was safe to do so. It’s unfortunate that they were not able to communicate freely for many years during the Nazis’ reign for fear of their letters being intercepted and read, so there’s also a lot we don’t know.
TO: Alongside a wide range of archival records, you also make significant use of three sets of oral history interviews from AIP’s collections. These include interviews with James Franck and Hertha Sponer-Franck and Hedwig Kohn from 1962, as well as an interview with Betsy Ancker-Johnson from 2008 . What unique information and context do these oral histories offer for telling this story?
OC: I’m so glad these interviews exist. They provide such an important peek into these women’s lives in their own words. I loved hearing Hedwig talk about how her physics teacher at her girls school wasn’t very good, so she and some of her friends sought out instruction from the teacher at the nearby boys school. Many of that teacher’s students went on to be eminent physicists, so this was likely a huge turning point in her education and in sparking her interest in physics. Hertha and Franck’s interview is a lot of fun because you get to hear their back and forth, their prompting each other about what they remember, their reminisces.
TO: Women’s colleges, including Wellesley, UNC Greensboro, Sweet Briar, Mount Holyoke, and Bryn Mawr, play important roles in the book. Could you talk a bit about the roles women’s colleges play in this story? How do these institutions relate to the sisterhood in science you are describing?
OC: At the time, it was relatively common for colleges and universities in America to have a policy of not hiring women. Whether it was an official policy or more of an unspoken one, or sometimes it was the director of science departments who simply refused to hire women. That meant it was hard enough to get a job as a professor as an American woman, let alone a refugee from Germany who couldn’t be interviewed beforehand. Women’s colleges were some of the only places that would even think about hiring women, so that’s where a lot of these refugees ended up. Even then, these women had to deal with administrators being xenophobic or worrying that they might be spies. Still, without these women’s colleges looking out for women scholars, many more women scientists would’ve been murdered by the Nazis.
TO: At several points in the book, you reference a lecture Lise Meitner gave at Bryn Mawr which was subsequently published in Physics Today as “The Status of Women in the Professions ” in 1960. What is it about that lecture and its publication in Physics Today that made you return to it multiple times in this story?
OC: Up until this point, I rarely found Lise mentioning women’s rights or feminism, so I felt like this was a really important text because it showed that she eventually realized what an inspirational figure she had become to many women and girls interested in science, and what a trailblazer in women’s rights she was. It’s a fascinating speech because she clearly did a lot of research for it on the history of women’s progress in being accepted into the professional realm. She also lived it—lived through a key era in the advancement of women’s acceptance in academia and other professions. And not only did she live it, she helped usher it in. Her undeniable brilliance was a beacon.
TO: I’m curious for your thoughts on how themes from this story connect to women’s experiences of physics today. The research team at AIP recently published a short report titled How Women Persist in Undergraduate Physics: The Importance of Social Support from Faculty and Peers . I would be curious to know if you think there are any resonances or connections between some of the stories in that report on women’s current experiences in physics and the historical story you draw out in your book.
OC: That sense of gender imbalance that women still feel in physics was of course much worse for these women. Often, they would’ve been the only woman in a professional setting. They faced incredible sexism and felt forced to publish under their initials for their work to be taken seriously. When I give talks about my book, I’ve had dozens of women scientists come up to me afterward and say the men in their labs are really sexist and make work unpleasant. I think one big issue is the lack of women professors or in high positions in universities to provide mentoring and inspiration and to cultivate less of a “boys club” atmosphere. But the problem is, we have to get women through those early years and into those positions of power without getting discouraged or feeling alienated and harassed and ultimately walking away. These historic stories are inspiring because they show us how these women persisted despite sexism and how their work showed the world that women could be brilliant physicists, but no modern woman should still be experiencing this.
