Hertha Sponer

Hertha Dorthea Elisabeth Sponer was a German physicist and chemist who contributed to modern quantum mechanics and molecular physics. She was the first woman on the physics faculty of Duke University and was one of only three women to earn both a PhD in Physics and Habilitation in Germany before the start of World War II, the others being Lise Meitner and Hedwig Kohn. Her younger sister was philologist and resistance fighter Margot Sponer.