Collection GB 1556 WL 1527 - Hecht, Selig (1892-1947): correspondence regarding anti-semitism in German universities

1 file

GB 1556 WL 1527 1933 collection 1 file Hecht , Selig , 1892-1947 , bio-physicist

Selig Hecht, American biophysicist, was born in Glogow, Austria (now Poland) in 1892. He moved to the United States in 1898 and graduated from the College of the City of New York (BS, 1913) and from Harvard (PhD, 1917). After organising the laboratory of biophysics at Columbia University, he was Professor of Biophysics there from 1926. He pioneered the application of physiochemical principles to sensory physiology and is known for his determination of minimal quantal requirements at the threshold of vision and for his successful laboratory regeneration of visual purple. An advocate of popular scientific education, he wrote Explaining the Atom, 1947 and died in the same year.

Deposited by Mrs Baer.

Papers of Selig Hecht, 1933, consist of two letters written by Selig Hecht, on a visit to Europe. The first, a letter to a colleague back home, outlines the problems facing Jewish academics in Nazi Germany, and introduces the second which is a much more detailed picture of the privations suffered by Jewish academics and also the indifference of the non-Jewish population, and the culmination of a latent antisemitism in the profession that had long pre-dated the Nazi seizure of power. The latter is addressed to Alfred Cohen. Others mentioned include Willstaetter, Fajans, and Alfred Wiener in his role as Syndikus or Director of the Organisation Centralverein deutscher Staatsbuerger Juedischen Glaubens.

Arranged in chronological order.

Open

Copies can be made for personal use. Permission must be sought for publication.

English

Description exists to this archive on the Wiener Library's online catalogue www.wienerlibrary.co.uk

Entry compiled by Howard Falksohn.

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

March 2008 Academic teaching personnel Antisemitism Educational personnel Europe European history German history Germany Hecht , Selig , 1892-1947 , bio-physicist Jews National history Nazism Physics education Political doctrines Racial discrimination Religious groups Science education Teachers Third Reich Totalitarianism Western Europe Personnel People by occupation People

Deposited by Mrs Baer.

Papers of Selig Hecht, 1933, consist of two letters written by Selig Hecht, on a visit to Europe. The first, a letter to a colleague back home, outlines the problems facing Jewish academics in Nazi Germany, and introduces the second which is a much more detailed picture of the privations suffered by Jewish academics and also the indifference of the non-Jewish population, and the culmination of a latent antisemitism in the profession that had long pre-dated the Nazi seizure of power. The latter is addressed to Alfred Cohen. Others mentioned include Willstaetter, Fajans, and Alfred Wiener in his role as Syndikus or Director of the Organisation Centralverein deutscher Staatsbuerger Juedischen Glaubens.

Arranged in chronological order.

Open

Copies can be made for personal use. Permission must be sought for publication.

• English

• Latin

English

Description exists to this archive on the Wiener Library's online catalogue www.wienerlibrary.co.uk

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

• English