Pauline Ramart

Pauline Ramart, also known as Pauline Ramart-Lucas, (22 November 1880 – 17 March 1953) was a French chemist and politician. Active in organic chemistry, she was the second woman to be appointed as a full professor at the University of Paris, after Marie Curie. As a Jewish women she was dismissed from her teaching post at the Sorbonne during World War II, but became active in the French resistance.

On 3 October 1911, Pauline Lucas married the lawyer Maurice Charles Auguste Ramart, born 26 January 1863 and took his surname.

Determined to study, in 1904 she enrolled in evening classes and correspondence courses. After earning her baccalauréat (secondary school diploma), she worked in Albin Haller's laboratory at the Faculté des Sciences.

Career

Ramart started her professional career in the laboratory of Albin Haller at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris. She then became a trainer at the Pasteur Institute. In 1913 she earned her doctorate in organic chemistry on the "synthesis of alcohols" from the University of Paris, Sorbonne under the supervision of Haller.

After completing long years of service at the Pasteur Institute, in 1925 Ramart became a lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Paris, with the support of atomic physicist Jean Perrin.

She was the doctoral advisor of Jean-Pierre Guerlain (1905–1996), nephew of Jacques Guerlain, who defended his thesis on the isomerization of aldehydes in 1931. Guerlain will later become director of the family perfume house Guerlain and oversaw its international expansion.

At the start of World War II, Ramart was research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, where she studied the link between UV spectra and chemical reactions for radiology. She received several scientific awards for her work. In 1941, she was dismissed from the Faculty of Sciences by the collaborationist Vichy regime because she was a Jewish woman. She then joined the French Resistance and worked with a group of radiology researchers at the Pasteur Institute. She was one of the first university women to join the resistance and remained active until the liberation. Thereafter she was able to return to her teaching post at the Sorbonne.

Ramart was the chair of organic chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris from 1944 until her death in 1953. A feminist, she was elected to the Free France Provisional Consultative Assembly in 1944, where she campaigned for women's suffrage during her term as the vice-president of the National Education section of the Provisional Consultative Assembly. although Marie Denizard had stood unsuccessfully in a Presidential election in 1913.

Ramart died in Paris on 17 March 1953.

A street in Montpellier was named to commemorate her. and the list was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.

Selected publications See also the OCLC/VIAF full list of publications. . Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Albin Haller, Paris, Dupont, 1926. L'effort créateur des chimistes, Paris, Editions de la Revue politique et littéraire (Revue bleue) et de la Revue scientifique, 1929. Rapports et discussions relatifs à la constitution et à la configuration des molécules organiques, Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1931. Relations entre la structure des molécules organiques et leur spectre d'absorption dans l'ultraviolet, Paris, Société chimique de France, 1932. Titres et travaux scientifiques de Pauline Ramart-Lucas (1924-1934), Paris, Impressions de la Cour d'Appel, 1934. Structure des hétérosides d'après leur absorption dans l'ultraviolet, avec M. J. Rabaté, 1935. Traité de chimie organique Tome II, publié sous la direction de Victor Grignard, avec A. Andant et M. Auméras, Paris, Masson, 1936. Aperçu de chimie organique, Paris, Hermann, 1937.