Nora Mohler

Nora May Mohler (1898 – November 29, 1984 ) was an American physicist, elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1941.

Biography Born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of John Frederick Mohler, a mathematician and physicist at Dickinson College and his wife Sarah Loomis Mohler. Mohler attended Conway Hall Preparatory School in Carlisle, graduating as class valedictorian; she was the last girl to attend the school, which subsequently became an all-boys institution. She went on to earn a bachelor's degree in 1917 from Dickinson College, and then undertook graduate studies at Bryn Mawr, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

After studying at Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe College, Mohler held teaching positions. She joined the faculty of Smith College as an instructor in 1927, then began research work under the supervision of Gladys Anslow, earning a PhD in 1934. This was the first PhD in physics that Smith had ever awarded. to do wartime research at the MIT Radiation Laboratory and for the National Defense Research Committee.

In 1951, Mohler was elected Vice-Chair of the American Physical Society's New England section. From 1953 through 1957, she served on the advisory board of the American Journal of Physics.

Selected publications

(Described in Nature as "a very interesting study of Swift's Voyage to Laputa, in which they show how carefully Swift read the contemporary scientific literature and how skilfully he was able to make use of it in his own writings". )