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Berta Scharrer

Dr. Berta V. Scharrer (December 1 1906 — July 23 1995) was a German-born scientist who helped to found the scientific discipline now known as neuroendocrinology (see http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/bscharrer.html). Due to her studies of invertebrates, particularly the cockroach, her name was given to an entire species of cockroach, known as the Scharrerae, found in Australasia.

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Berta Vogel was born in Munich, Germany, to Johanna Weiss Vogel and Karl Phillip Vogel, who 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 (8) dollars.

Despite discrimination against women scientists at the time she eventually got a professorship at Einstein College in the Bronx, a branch of Yeshiva University, in September 1955. She remained at Einstein College until 1995, when she retired as a professor emerita five (5) months before her death at age 88. Her husband died in 1965 in a swimming accident.

She earned honorary degrees from various universities, including Harvard, "as well as a nomination for a Nobel Prize for her pioneering research in brain chemicals."