Berta Scharrer

Berta Vogel Scharrer (December 1, 1906 – July 23, 1995) was a German-born American scientist who helped to found the scientific discipline now known as neuroendocrinology.

Career

Berta Vogel was born in Munich to Karl and Johanna (née Weiss). Her father served as vice-president of the federal court of Bavaria. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Munich. She worked at the university with Prof. Karl von Frisch, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for his work with bees. Berta Scharrer was forced to emigrate at the onset of the Holocaust. She arrived with her husband, Ernst Scharrer, in the United States with a total of eight dollars. Despite discrimination against women scientists at the time, she eventually got a professorship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the medical school of Yeshiva University, in September 1955.

Death

She did research and taught at Einstein until her retirement in 1995, five months before her death at age 88. Her husband had died in 1965 in a swimming accident. They had no children.

Honors

Scharrer was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. She earned honorary degrees from various universities, including one from Harvard in 1982, "as well as a nomination for a Nobel Prize for her pioneering research in brain chemicals".

Legacy

Scharrer's studies of invertebrates, particularly cockroaches, was so extensive that her name was given to a species of cockroach, known as the Escala scharrerae, found in Australasia. Scharrer was awarded the Schleiden Medal in 1983 and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bibliography

• Neuropeptides and immunoregulation (1994) New York City, ISBN 0-387-57188-4
• Functional morphology of neuroendocrine systems : evolutionary and environmental aspects (1995) New York City, ISBN 0-387-18155-5
• Handbuch der mikroskopischen Anatomie des Menschen, Bd. 6., Blutgefäss- und Lymphgefässapparat: Innersekretorische Drüsen T. 5., Die Nebenniere. Neurosekretion (1954)
• The structure of the ring-gland (Corpus allatum) in normal and lethal larvae of Drosophila melanogaster (1938), Washington, D.C.

External links

• Tribute to Prof. Berta Scharrer on her 85th birthday (paid subscription required)
• Berta Scharrer in the German National Library catalogue (in German)