Martha Geiringer

Photograph taken by Nice police in June 1940 for crossing from Italy into France illegally. Martha Geiringer (28 August 1912 – c. 18 January 1943) was an Austrian biologist who worked at the Biological Research Institute in Vienna from 1935 to 1938. She was forced to leave due to being Jewish during the Anschluss, the German invasion of Austria. She was executed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Early life and education Geiringer was born in Vienna to Wilhelm (1881–1930) who owned a coffee house and was a distant cousin of Gustav Mahler, and his wife Irma, née Körner (1885–1957). She studied biology and sociology at the University of Vienna from 1931. In 1935, she worked on her doctoral research under Hans Przibram at the Biologische Versuchsanstalt (BVA) in the Vienna Academy of Sciences. The BVA had been founded in 1902 to work on developmental and theoretical biology including biophysics and biochemistry.

Career Geiringer was conducting experimental studies on the metamorphosis of Bufo vulgaris and examining the role of hormones. She had examined the role of adrenaline as a synergist of thyroxin. She was forced to leave on account of her Jewish origins after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938.

Legacy In May 2005 pianist and composer Frederick Adler, the son of her sister Gertrude, dedicated a string quartet in the memory of Martha Geiringer and premiered in Ghent. A stolperstein was installed in Ghent in 2022.