This is Elisabeth Wollman (1888-1943). Her life was extraordinary & her legacy is phenomenal.
In collaboration with her husband, Eugène, she was a pioneer of what became molecular genetics. This pic is her Pasteur Institute portrait from the early 1920s.
Their groundbreaking work was carried on by a colleague & their son, leading to a Nobel prize & more.
CW: The Wollmans' lives were ended in Auschwitz.
I've just created her Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Wollman
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...She was born Elisabeth Michelis in Minsk in 1888, then in the Russian Empire. Eugène Wollman was the son of family friends. Both families were Jewish.
Here's a portrait of Elisabeth when was a university student at the University of Liège in 1908. She graduated in physics & mathematics.
Eugène graduated in medicine in 1909, & they married. They went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Except for a few years in Chile, they would work there all their careers - she was unpaid though...
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....This is Eugène around the time they married.
For the first 10 years at the Pasteur Institute, Elisabeth worked for Jacques Duclaux - a physicist, biologist & chemist.
She also co-authored the first of many papers with Eugène (published in 1915).
Elisabeth also gave birth to 3 children in that time. The eldest, Alice, became a medical doctor. The second, Élie, became deputy director of the Pasteur Institute. The youngest, Nadine, became a physicist & professor (married name Marty)...
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...Eugène volunteered in the French medical corps during World War 1, serving at several fronts. He was decorated & later awarded French citizenship.
In 1919, he got to head his own laboratory at Pasteur, & from 1923 till their deaths, the couple collaborated on a ground-breaking series of experiments & papers on bacteriophages & lysogeny, the cycle of infections in bacteria. They were among the first to recognize a genetic component to infections in bacteria...
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..The Wollmans kept working in Paris after Nazi occupation in 1940, though prohibited from publishing.
In December 1943, they & Nadine were arrested. She worked for Joliot-Curie (Mme Curie's son-in-law), who managed to get her out.
This is their son, Èlie. He was in the Resistance, under a false name. He came back to Paris to try to get his parents released.
But Elisabeth & Eugène were soon sent to #Auschwitz. They died on the same day, apparently selected for the gas chamber on arrival.
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..In 1945 Élie joined the Pasteur. A colleague, André Lwoff, wanted the world to know how important the Wollmans' work had been: he carried on where they had left off, leading to his 1965 Nobel Prize.
Élie joined in. He & another Pasteur scientist first identified plasmids. His son, Francis-André Wollman, is a prominent scientist.
Elisabeth & Eugène's work lay groundwork for understanding viruses, cancer, & HIV. This plaque at Pasteur honors them & Élie as pioneers of modern biology.
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Hilda Bastian