Sisters in Science Summary and Analysis
Sisters in Science by Olivia Campbell is a nonfiction book that traces the lives and scientific legacies of four brilliant women physicists—Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen. These women battled systemic sexism, rising fascism, and the upheaval of global war to preserve their careers and integrity.
This book is more than a history of science—it’s a testament to the courage and perseverance of women whose intellects were dismissed and whose identities made them targets under Nazi rule. By following their academic journeys, escapes, and eventual impact on global science, Campbell offers a powerful reflection on resilience and recognition in the face of institutional betrayal.
Summary
The story opens in the early 20th century when the academic world remains largely inaccessible to women. Olivia Campbell introduces four remarkable women—Lise Meitner, Hedwig Kohn, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen—who begin their scientific careers in Germany, struggling against entrenched gender discrimination.
These women, through sheer persistence, carve out spaces for themselves in elite institutions, contributing significantly to the fields of spectroscopy, quantum chemistry, and nuclear physics. Their early successes, however, occur against the backdrop of a volatile and increasingly nationalistic Germany.
In the years leading up to the Nazi regime, figures like Meitner and Sponer begin to build significant reputations. Meitner, working with Otto Hahn in Berlin, plays a central role in nuclear research.
Sponer’s work in molecular spectroscopy gains international recognition. Hedwig Kohn, known for her contributions to spectroscopy, is respected for her rigorous experimental techniques.
Hildegard Stücklen, though less publicly visible, is similarly advancing studies in gas discharge physics and publishing widely. However, despite their talent, these women remain vulnerable within a male-dominated academic structure that only begrudgingly grants them limited roles.
The Nazi rise to power marks a catastrophic shift. In 1933, the regime enacts the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which results in the dismissal of Jewish and politically “unreliable” professors from universities.
Lise Meitner, of Jewish ancestry, and Hedwig Kohn, openly Jewish, find themselves immediately at risk. Meitner is initially spared due to her Austrian citizenship, but the Anschluss of 1938 removes that protection.
Kohn, with no immediate escape route, begins a desperate search for foreign posts. Even non-Jewish scientists like Sponer and Stücklen face academic sidelining due to their gender or perceived lack of ideological conformity.
Their individual paths to safety are perilous. Meitner’s escape from Austria is organized through a clandestine network of European scientists, including Dutch colleagues who help her flee under a false name.
She eventually finds refuge in Sweden, though she is provided with substandard laboratory resources and regarded as a burden by local academics. Despite these conditions, she continues corresponding with Hahn and interprets experimental results that form the basis of nuclear fission.
Kohn faces prolonged uncertainty, hindered by visa restrictions and the U.S. State Department’s narrow quotas. Eventually, she secures a position in the U.S., where she begins teaching at women’s colleges.
Sponer, aided by grants and personal connections, lands a position at Duke University, where she becomes instrumental in building its physics department. Stücklen relocates to the U.S. as well, though with less fanfare, finding her place in liberal arts institutions where she continues research and teaching.
Once resettled, each woman attempts to rebuild a scientific career in exile. They often accept posts below their qualifications, lacking access to the prestigious institutions their male counterparts enter more readily.
Still, they contribute meaningfully to scientific progress and, crucially, to education. Teaching at women’s colleges, they mentor a new generation of scientists, particularly young women, and help reshape physics curricula in the United States.
Postwar years bring a mix of quiet triumph and lingering injustice. Meitner, despite her foundational role in the discovery of fission, is overlooked for the Nobel Prize, which is awarded solely to Hahn.
Recognition arrives too late and never quite in proportion to her contributions. Sponer flourishes professionally, achieving tenure and acclaim at Duke.
Kohn, though based in smaller colleges, is beloved for her lab-building efforts and mentorship. Stücklen, working in relative obscurity, still manages a stable and fulfilling career.
Though displaced and often undervalued, these women reshape science through quiet persistence and an unwavering belief in the power of knowledge. Their lives are not just narratives of survival but of scientific continuity, ethical steadfastness, and generational influence.
Campbell’s book is a powerful memorial to their sacrifices and a long-overdue tribute to their achievements.
Key People
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner emerges as both a scientific genius and a tragic figure whose brilliance was persistently overshadowed by systemic gender and racial bias. Born into a Jewish family but raised Protestant, she established herself as a nuclear physicist in a male-dominated world.
She collaborated with Otto Hahn in Germany and played a pivotal role in the discovery of nuclear fission. Despite her crucial theoretical work, she was excluded from the 1944 Nobel Prize awarded solely to Hahn—an exclusion that became symbolic of how women were written out of scientific history.
Her escape from Nazi Austria was perilous and marked by bureaucratic evasions and the support of loyal male colleagues. In exile, Meitner continued her research in Sweden, although her Swedish colleagues offered her poor facilities and little regard.
Later, she moved to the U.K., where she continued advocating for science and ethics but was never granted the institutional prestige that her scientific contributions warranted. Her career reflects the dual challenge of being a woman and an ethnic outsider in European science—recognized too late and often with misgivings.
She remained humble despite belated honors, rejecting labels like “mother of the atom bomb,” which conflicted with her humanitarian ideals.
Hedwig Kohn
Hedwig Kohn’s story is one of methodical brilliance, personal resilience, and understated transformation. A master of spectroscopy, she built her reputation through rigorous experimentation and teaching at the University of Breslau.
Her scientific contributions, particularly in the measurement of light intensity and atomic spectra, were substantial and foundational. However, as a Jewish woman, she was swiftly ousted from her academic position by the Nazi racial laws.
Her journey to escape Nazi Germany was particularly harrowing—marked by numerous failed visa applications, long periods of professional limbo, and dependence on the slow-moving machinery of academic rescue networks. Unlike some of her contemporaries, she did not secure a position in elite institutions.
Instead, she rebuilt her career in American women’s colleges such as Wellesley and the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina. There, she not only resumed scientific work but also trained generations of women in physics, establishing respected laboratories despite scarce resources.
Kohn exemplified the transformative power of education and persistence. Her story is a testament to how scientific impact can flourish in nontraditional environments, and how exile, while tragic, can lead to new forms of intellectual legacy.
Hertha Sponer
Hertha Sponer occupies a unique space in the narrative as both a scientific trailblazer and a successful institutional builder. A German physicist and chemist, she made seminal contributions to molecular spectroscopy and quantum chemistry.
Initially collaborating with figures like James Franck, she brought German precision and rigor into her research. Her decision to emigrate to the U.S. before the full onset of Nazi terror enabled her to secure a more stable academic foothold than some of her peers.
She joined Duke University, where she became a pillar of its physics department, integrating modern research methods and fostering German-American scholarly collaboration. Sponer’s story differs in its relative stability and success, yet it also reveals the constraints imposed on even the most qualified women.
Though she achieved tenure and research distinction, her journey required continual negotiation of cultural and institutional skepticism toward female scientists. Sponer remained a committed educator, researcher, and mentor, helping shape U.S. science education during and after the war.
Her legacy lives in the institutions she strengthened and the students she mentored, underscoring her role not only as a survivor of exile but as a scientific architect in a new homeland.
Hildegard Stücklen
Hildegard Stücklen is perhaps the most understated among the quartet, yet her quiet strength and consistent contributions make her integral to the broader narrative. Specializing in gas discharge and spectroscopy, she built her career with meticulous research and practical teaching.
Unlike Meitner or Sponer, Stücklen’s path was not marked by fame or controversy but by a steady commitment to science under trying circumstances. She emigrated from Europe with little fanfare and took up positions at American liberal arts and women’s colleges, where she became a respected educator and researcher.
Her work was instrumental in sustaining advanced physics curricula in institutions often overlooked by the broader academic community. Stücklen’s legacy is one of constancy and quiet dedication—of preserving scientific rigor in settings that lacked prestige but served as havens for displaced intellectuals.
Her presence in these institutions ensured that women students encountered serious scientific education during an era when few other opportunities existed. Stücklen may not have been as celebrated or widely known, but her enduring commitment to both pedagogy and research reflects the essential role of less-publicized scientists in maintaining and transmitting knowledge across generations.
These character arcs, as woven together in Sisters in Science, do more than recount individual struggles. They collectively illustrate the structural forces—patriarchy, xenophobia, and war—that these women resisted and, in many ways, transcended.
Their lives form a constellation of brilliance that illuminated mid-20th-century science from the margins.
Themes
Gender Discrimination in Academia
The lives of Lise Meitner, Hedwig Kohn, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen exemplify how ingrained sexism prevented women from securing full academic status, regardless of their intellectual prowess or groundbreaking discoveries.
Even before the Nazi regime imposed racial laws, universities in Germany resisted granting women the right to habilitation, denied them paid positions, and treated their contributions as secondary to their male peers. Women often had to accept assistant roles, unpaid lectureships, or posts without formal recognition.
Lise Meitner’s difficulties in becoming a department head, despite being one of the most accomplished physicists of her generation, highlight the way gatekeeping within male-dominated institutions marginalized women. Hertha Sponer’s uphill battle to secure even a teaching position, despite her qualifications in quantum chemistry, reveals how capable women were consistently underestimated or overlooked.
This discrimination extended into exile, where even after escaping the Nazi regime, many women scientists were offered junior roles in host countries far below their experience level. Their male colleagues were often prioritized for prestigious academic appointments or public recognition.
This pattern illustrates how gender discrimination was not confined to Germany or to wartime conditions, but was deeply embedded in the international scientific community. The theme underscores how intellectual merit was constantly weighed down by societal biases, and how these women had to work twice as hard for half the recognition.
Their perseverance reveals the hidden cost of progress in science—a cost paid by those who were denied their rightful place at the table due to their gender.
Exile and Scientific Reinvention
Another major theme explored in Sisters in Science is exile, not just as a physical displacement but as an intellectual and emotional rupture that forced the reinvention of entire scientific careers. The Nazi regime’s racial and political policies resulted in the expulsion of many Jewish scientists and other perceived dissidents.
For the four women profiled in the book, this meant not only fleeing for their lives but also reconstructing their academic identities in unfamiliar lands. Lise Meitner’s escape from Austria was perilous, involving false documents and covert travel.
Upon reaching Sweden, she was welcomed with suspicion rather than enthusiasm and given inadequate resources to continue her work. Despite having co-discovered nuclear fission, she found herself cut off from experimental facilities and key colleagues.
Hedwig Kohn faced endless delays in obtaining a visa and lived in limbo before she was finally able to teach in the U.S. Hertha Sponer and Hildegard Stücklen also had to reorient their careers toward teaching in under-resourced institutions.
The sense of isolation—scientific, cultural, and personal—was profound. They were distanced from their research networks, had limited access to scientific journals, and worked in environments where they were frequently the only women or foreigners.
Yet, despite these challenges, they did not give up their scientific pursuits. Instead, they adapted their work, mentored new generations of students, and laid foundations for scientific education in their host countries.
The theme emphasizes the resilience required to start over in exile and how exile, while a forced condition, also became a space of innovation and influence. Reinvention became not a choice but a necessity—and one that these women shouldered with both courage and determination.
Erasure and Delayed Recognition
Throughout Sisters in Science, the theme of historical erasure and the delayed recognition of women’s scientific contributions is repeatedly emphasized. These scientists were not only marginalized during their active careers but were often omitted from the historical record altogether.
Lise Meitner’s exclusion from the Nobel Prize for nuclear fission—despite her vital theoretical explanation of the process—is perhaps the most glaring example. Otto Hahn, her former collaborator, received the prize in 1944 without even mentioning her name in his acceptance.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Hertha Sponer, despite her role in pioneering spectroscopy and building a physics program in the American South, was largely absent from major scientific accolades.
Hedwig Kohn’s advancements in spectrometry were ignored by the very institutions that had earlier benefited from her research. Hildegard Stücklen, who made notable contributions to gas discharge physics, also faded into obscurity compared to her male contemporaries.
The book highlights how postwar science often celebrated male refugee scientists while sidelining women to the periphery. Recognition for these women, if it came at all, was often posthumous or limited to niche academic circles.
Some received awards late in life, such as Meitner’s Max Planck Medal and the Enrico Fermi Award, but these honors could not undo the decades of neglect. The theme forces a reflection on how the scientific canon is constructed and who is deemed worthy of remembrance.
It challenges the reader to consider not just the contributions themselves but the systemic mechanisms that determine whose names get etched into history and whose are forgotten. This delayed recognition underscores the importance of reexamining historical narratives to include those whose brilliance was long overshadowed.
Science in the Shadow of War and Politics
A critical theme running through Sisters in Science is how war and political ideology shape the development, direction, and ethics of science. The rise of Nazism disrupted not only individual lives but also entire scientific ecosystems.
Germany, once a hub of academic innovation, rapidly degenerated into a hostile environment where political loyalty trumped intellectual merit. The 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service targeted Jewish and politically “undesirable” academics, undermining the integrity of institutions like the University of Göttingen and Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
Science became a battleground, where racial ideology dictated who could teach, research, or even live. Lise Meitner’s work on nuclear fission occurred under constant surveillance and suspicion.
Her Jewish ancestry marked her as expendable despite her achievements. Even after fleeing, the war continued to shape her role, with the U.S. and U.K. military-industrial complexes excluding her from classified projects like the Manhattan Project due to gender and foreign status.
Similarly, while Sponer and Kohn contributed to war-adjacent research and trained American scientists, they remained on the margins of the official war effort. The theme reveals how political regimes can stifle scientific progress by elevating ideology over inquiry.
It also highlights the ethical dilemmas faced by exiled scientists—whether to contribute to wartime science, how to reconcile their work with its potential for destruction, and what responsibilities scientists bear in politically fraught times.
The theme presents science not as a neutral endeavor but as one constantly at the mercy of external forces, where progress is shaped as much by context as by intellect.