Marcella Boveri

Marcella Boveri ( born October 7, 1863 in Boston, † October 24, 1950 in Trenton, New Jersey), born as Marcella O'Grady, was an American biologist. She married the German biologist Theodor Boveri, her daughter Margret Boveri is one of the most famous post-war German journalists.

Marcella Boveri was the daughter of Irish immigrants. She belonged to the first generation of women who completed a science-oriented studies and put the first woman in 1885 to her final exam at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from. After she completed a postgraduate course at Harvard University, she worked as assistant zoologist and first U.S. geneticist Edmund B. Wilson at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 1889, she moved to Vassar College, where she worked as a lecturer.

1896 visited Marcella Boveri Würzburg, her research continued at the Zoological Institute in cytology. In Germany women at that time were not yet admitted to university. She was therefore the first officially approved listener in this institute. She was admired mainly as a curiosity. One of the few who supported them in their work and remained life-long friendly relations with her, was Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. In Würzburg, she also met her future husband, whom she married shortly thereafter.

With the wedding and the birth of her daughter Margret Boveri, who was born on August 14, 1900 Marcella Boveri gave up both her ​​scientific career as well as their U.S. citizenship. In the second year of the First World War, on 15 October 1915, died Theodor Boveri, who was ailing for some time. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, who, however, was not one of the doctors who treated Boveri, suspected poisoning by radium.

Marcella Boveri initially remained in Germany. She returned in January 1925 in the USA, where she was recognized as a scientist and was not only perceived as a widow of Theodor Boveri biologists. At the age of 62 years, she took on the Catholic Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, the structure of the faculty of science ( "science department" ). She taught there until 1943.