Hecht, Selig (1892-1947): correspondence regarding anti-semitism in German universities

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 1556 WL 1527
Held at	: Wiener Library   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/ ›
Full title	: Hecht, Selig (1892-1947): correspondence regarding anti-semitism in German universities
Date(s)	: 1933
Level of description	: collection
Extent	: 1 file
Name of creator(s)	: Hecht | Selig | 1892-1947 | bio-physicist

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Selig Hecht, American biophysicist, was born in Glogow, Austria (now Poland) in 1892. He moved to the United States in 1898 and graduated from the College of the City of New York (BS, 1913) and from Harvard (PhD, 1917). After organising the laboratory of biophysics at Columbia University, he was Professor of Biophysics there from 1926. He pioneered the application of physiochemical principles to sensory physiology and is known for his determination of minimal quantal requirements at the threshold of vision and for his successful laboratory regeneration of visual purple. An advocate of popular scientific education, he wrote Explaining the Atom, 1947 and died in the same year.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Papers of Selig Hecht, 1933, consist of two letters written by Selig Hecht, on a visit to Europe. The first, a letter to a colleague back home, outlines the problems facing Jewish academics in Nazi Germany, and introduces the second which is a much more detailed picture of the privations suffered by Jewish academics and also the indifference of the non-Jewish population, and the culmination of a latent antisemitism in the profession that had long pre-dated the Nazi seizure of power. The latter is addressed to Alfred Cohen. Others mentioned include Willstaetter, Fajans, and Alfred Wiener in his role as Syndikus or Director of the Organisation Centralverein deutscher Staatsbuerger Juedischen Glaubens.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

Arranged in chronological order.

Conditions governing access:

Open

Conditions governing reproduction:

Copies can be made for personal use. Permission must be sought for publication.

Finding aids:

Description exists to this archive on the Wiener Library's online catalogue www.wienerlibrary.co.uk

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Deposited by Mrs Baer.

Allied Materials

Related material:

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Entry compiled by Howard Falksohn.

Rules or conventions:
Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
March 2008