Sonja Krause Goodwin (1933–2021) [1] was a Swiss-American physical chemist specializing in the thermodynamics and effects of electric fields on polymer solutions, and also interested in climate history. [2]
Krause was born in 1933 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. [3] When she was a child, she left Europe with her parents to escape Nazi Germany, emigrating to New York City, where her parents sold German-language books. She went to the Bronx High School of Science, as one of the first women to attend that school, [1] and graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1954. [4] She completed a Ph.D. in 1958 at the University of California, Berkeley, with the dissertation Electric Birefringence Studies of Some Macromolecular Solutions Using Microsecond Transients. [5]
After working in industry at the Rohm & Haas Company, [6] she spent several years in the mid-1960s in the Peace Corps heading the physics department at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, and later in Ethiopia. She returned to Rensselaer as a faculty member in physical chemistry in 1967, and was named full professor in 1978. She retired in 2004. [4]
Krause was a coauthor of the textbook Chemistry of the Environment (1978; 2nd ed., 2002, Harcourt/Academic Press, with R. A. Bailey, H. M. Clark, J. P. Ferris, and R. L. Strong). [7] She also published her experiences in the Peace Corps as the two-book series My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Nigeria, 1964–1965 and My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Ethiopia, 1965–1966 (Hamilton Books, 2021).
Krause was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Division of Polymer Physics, in 1976. [8] She was also a Fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. [9]
Sonja Krause Goodwin (1933–2021) [1] was a Swiss-American physical chemist specializing in the thermodynamics and effects of electric fields on polymer solutions, and also interested in climate history. [2]
Krause was born in 1933 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. [3] When she was a child, she left Europe with her parents to escape Nazi Germany, emigrating to New York City, where her parents sold German-language books. She went to the Bronx High School of Science, as one of the first women to attend that school, [1] and graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1954. [4] She completed a Ph.D. in 1958 at the University of California, Berkeley, with the dissertation Electric Birefringence Studies of Some Macromolecular Solutions Using Microsecond Transients. [5]
After working in industry at the Rohm & Haas Company, [6] she spent several years in the mid-1960s in the Peace Corps heading the physics department at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, and later in Ethiopia. She returned to Rensselaer as a faculty member in physical chemistry in 1967, and was named full professor in 1978. She retired in 2004. [4]
Krause was a coauthor of the textbook Chemistry of the Environment (1978; 2nd ed., 2002, Harcourt/Academic Press, with R. A. Bailey, H. M. Clark, J. P. Ferris, and R. L. Strong). [7] She also published her experiences in the Peace Corps as the two-book series My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Nigeria, 1964–1965 and My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Ethiopia, 1965–1966 (Hamilton Books, 2021).
Krause was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Division of Polymer Physics, in 1976. [8] She was also a Fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. [9]