Weaver's Web

Ingeborg Syllm was a 25 year old graduate student at the University of Hamburg in 1938, who was not allowed to defend her doctoral thesis on Diphtheria, because her mother had been Jewish. She was fortunate enough to leave the country and emigrate to the US, where she went on to graduate from medical school at the Medical College of Pennsylvania (formerly Women's Medical) and ultimately she became a neonatologist. She married another Jewish emigrant physician, Dr. Samuel Rapoport, whom she met while they were doing their residencies. They went on to have 4 children (one of whom now teaches at Harvard), before returning to Germany during the McCarthy era. The Rapoports were both strong political leftists.

This month Dr Rapoport got the chance to successfully defend the thesis she wrote 77 years ago, and in June, at the tender age of 102, will become the oldest individual on record to earn a doctorate.

I heard about this on NPR as I was driving in to Santa Rosa on Saturday, to do rounds at the hospital. Honestly, hearing it made my day.