Isabella Karle

Isabella Karle Helen ( born December 2, 1921 as Isabella Helen Lugoski in Detroit, Michigan) is an American physical chemist.

Life

Isabella Lugoskis parents, Zygmunt and Elizabeth Lugoski, were Polish immigrants who attached great importance to a good education for their daughter. After a semester at Wayne State University in Detroit Isabella moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she in 1941 a BA in chemistry and earned her degree in 1942 and graduated with a master. In the same year she married the later Nobel Prize for Chemistry Jerome Karle. The couple has three daughters. Jerome and Isabella Karle earned both 1944 Lawrence Olin Brockway a Ph.D., Isabella in physical chemistry. Then they both worked briefly at the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. Isabella Karle was the first female faculty member of the University of Michigan before 1946 together with her husband at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC went. Isabella Karle took over in 1959 the management of the local Department of X-ray diffraction (X -ray diffraction). The Karles remained the Naval Research Laboratory over 60 years of loyal, before both were adopted in 2009 by the Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to retire.

Work

Isabella Karle has numerous works to the electron and X-ray diffraction and X-ray crystallography to be published, with whose help they could elucidate the chemical structure of many organic and inorganic compounds, including complex natural products such as steroids, toxins or ion channels. Here, she has been able to achieve significant improvements in crystallography ( including the Symbolic Addition Procedure) and thus had a significant impact on the practice of organic and inorganic chemistry. Isabella Karle has published over 350 papers in scientific journals.

Awards (selection)

Isabella Karle is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates ( University of Athens, Jagiellonian University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, University of Maryland, Georgetown University, Wayne State University).