Adelheid Kofler


Adelheid Kofler née Schaschek was an Austrian inventor, mineralogist, and ophthalmologist. She was among the early women to receive both Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from the University of Vienna.

Biography

After attending public school in Amstetten, Lower Austria, Adelheid Schaschek she studied from 1903 to 1907 at the municipal girls' lyceum in Brno, Czech Republic. From 1907 to 1911, she studied at the University of Vienna. In 1911, she passed the teaching examination, which qualified her to teach mathematics, natural history, and physics to female students at lyceums. In 1912, she passed a further examination, qualifying her to teach at teacher training institutions and higher schools for girls. She subsequently taught at the girls' lyceum in the Viennese district of Mariahilf.
Under the direction of Friedrich Johann Karl Becke, she completed her doctoral dissertation on mineralogy and received her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1913. Beginning in 1917, she studied medicine at the same university, earning her M.D. in 1921 and specializing in ophthalmology.
In 1921, she married the pharmacologist Ludwig Kofler in Vienna.
In 1925, Adelheid Kofler moved with her family to Innsbruck. From the early 1930s, she assisted her husband in his research at the University of Innsbruck's pharmacognostics institute. Applying her knowledge of mineralogy, she conducted studies on the behavior of mixed crystals during melting and crystallization. Together with her husband, she developed the Kofler hot microscope and the Kofler hot bench. Much of her research focused on polymorphism, collaborating with fellow researcher, Maria Kuhnert-Brandstätter.
The joint research conducted by the Koflers combined their respective academic strengths.
Ludwig next reported a method for determining refractive index using his hot stage: the unknown would be mixed with a few fragments of one of 23 different grades of glass; these vanished when the refractive index of glass and melt matched. Developing these ideas further, the Koflers devised a microscale version of the Rast molecular weight method, with camphor and the unknown together on the heated stage. Then Adelheid put two substances side-by-side on the stage and could both watch them melt separately and observe their interaction at the interface. This led to studies of co-crystals and eutectics. Photomicrographs illustrate these magnificent papers.
They had a daughter, Erika, and two sons, Helmut and Walter. Walter collaborated on research with his father in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ludwig Kofler died by suicide in 1951.

Awards and honors

Selected publications

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