Sonja Krause

Sonja Krause Goodwin (1933–2021)[1] was a Swiss-American physical chemist specializing in the thermodynamics and effects of electric fields on polymer solutions, and also interested in climate history.[2]

Education and career

Krause was born in 1933 in St. Gallen, Switzerland.[3] When she was a child, she left Europe with her parents to escape Nazi Germany, emigrating to New York City, where her parents sold German-language books. She went to the Bronx High School of Science, as one of the first women to attend that school,[1] and graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1954.[4] She completed a Ph.D. in 1958 at the University of California, Berkeley, with the dissertation Electric Birefringence Studies of Some Macromolecular Solutions Using Microsecond Transients.[5]

After working in industry at the Rohm & Haas Company,[6] she spent several years in the mid-1960s in the Peace Corps heading the physics department at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, and later in Ethiopia. She returned to Rensselaer as a faculty member in physical chemistry in 1967, and was named full professor in 1978. She retired in 2004.[4]

Books

Krause was a coauthor of the textbook Chemistry of the Environment (1978; 2nd ed., 2002, Harcourt/Academic Press, with R. A. Bailey, H. M. Clark, J. P. Ferris, and R. L. Strong).[7] She also published her experiences in the Peace Corps as the two-book series My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Nigeria, 1964–1965 and My Years in the Early Peace Corps: Ethiopia, 1965–1966 (Hamilton Books, 2021).

Recognition

Krause was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Division of Polymer Physics, in 1976.[8] She was also a Fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.[9]

References
  1. In memoriam January 2022, National Peace Corps Association, retrieved 2022-03-31
  2. "About the authors", Chemistry of the Environment (2nd ed.), Harcourt/Academic Press, 2002, p. xxiv
  3. Birth year and place from Library of Congress catalog entry, retrieved 2021-08-25
  4. "From the Archives: Women Faculty at Rensselaer", Every day matters: the RPI research & discovery blog, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 6 March 2014, retrieved 2021-08-25
  5. WorldCat catalog entry for Electric Birefringence Studies of Some Macromolecular Solutions Using Microsecond Transients, retrieved 2021-08-25
  6. As listed in publications and patents from the time
  7. Chakrabarti, C. L.; Teskey, R. J. (March 1981), "Review of Chemistry of the Environment", Journal of Chemical Education, American Chemical Society, 58 (3): A116, doi:10.1021/ed058pa116.1
  8. "Fellows nominated in 1976 by the Division of Polymer Physics", APS Fellows archive, American Physical Society, retrieved 2021-08-25
  9. "Krause, Prof. Sonja", Members, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, retrieved 2021-08-25
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