[The wife of the Nobel Laurate: Elsbet Forßmann née Engel (1906-1993)].

چکیده اصلی

This article highlights the life and work of the urologist Elsbet Forßmann (1906-1993), who was remembered for a very long time as the "brave and understanding wife" of Nobel Prize laureate Werner Forßmann (1904-1979) and draws attention to the widespread invisibility of women in the culture of memory of the field. But she was far more than that. After completing her training under Karl Heusch (1894-1986) at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Berlin from 1933-1934, she was one of the first two female physicians to earn board certification in urology in the postwar period. Building on broad surgical training, her clinical practice covered the "entire spectrum of urology," and she remained dedicated to her specialty throughout her life. As the mother of six children, she temporarily ensured her family's financial security after 1945 with her rural medical practice in Bad Kreuznach; her husband, Werner Forßmann, also worked at this practice. Elsbet Forßmann is thus undoubtedly one of the pioneers in the history of urology in the Federal Republic of Germany. As a figure long reduced in public and professional discourse to the role of the "wife of the Nobel laureate," an examination of Forßmann's life is inextricably linked to questions of gendered attributions within cultures of scientific recognition and professional memory within the histories of scientific disciplines. This article demonstrates how selectively disciplinary memory functions and how social background, gender, and the structural conditions of scientific recognition influence visibility and cultures of recognition in academia. This examination of Elsbet Forßmann's biography can thus also be seen as a contribution to a culture of critical and reflective remembrance within the field of urology.

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