ENGLISH PROJECT
Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu The biography of a great scientist
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Elisa Leonida was born in 1887, this pioneer had engineering in her blood. Elisa’s parents were Anastase Leonida, an army officer, and Matilda Gill. Born and raised in Galați, Romania, as one of ten siblings, Elisa was educated in Bucharest. She graduated from the Central School of Girls and achieved her baccalaureate from the Mihai Viteazul High School. Wanting to stay in Bucharest, her love of science led her to apply to do a degree at the School of Bridges and Roads in Bucharest. She was rejected on account of her gender.
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Undeterred, Elisa Leonida applied further afield and in 1909 she was accepted to the Royal Academy of Technology Berlin (now the Technical University of Berlin), in Charlottenburg, Germany. Her acceptance onto the programme was not without challenge - it is thought that the Dean tried to use the argument that women should concentrate on Kirche, Kinder, Küche (church, children, cooking) to dissuade her.
• Elisa Leonida is often thought of as the first female engineer in Europe, or even in the world. She was certainly the first in Romania, and the first female engineering graduate in Germany. But the world first goes to Irish Alice Perry who graduated six years earlier with a degree in civil engineering from Queen’s College, Galway.
• Having notched up that coveted degree, Elisa Leonida turned down a job offer at BASF Germany, and began her career as an assistant at the recently formed Geological Institute of Romania.
• Soon after, her career was interrupted by the Great War. Elisa joined the Red Cross and ran several hospitals, for which she was highly decorated. She received a medal of honour from the Ministry of France in Romania citing the following reasons:
• Very zealous nurse, very dedicated, has shown good qualities of abnegation and disregard for danger, in the run of the epidemic of exanthematic typhus, in particular by giving her care to a French officer with typhus at Vaslui
• In 1917, she managed a hospital in the small town of Mărășești Romania that cared for casualties from the Battle of Mărășești - the last major battle between Romania and Germany. Romania came out victors, but the battle left more than 22,000 wounded.
• After the war, Elisa returned to her work at the Geological Institute, now Elisa Zamfirescu, having met and married Constantin Zamfirescu, a chemist and the brother of the writer Duiliu Zamfirescu, in 1918. It is thought that Queen Marie of Romania and her daughter Princess Ileana attended their wedding. • Elisa and Constantin had two daughters, Măriuca and Ancuţa Zoe. Like mother like daughter, Ancuţa Zoe went on to become a chemist.
https://www.europeana.eu/el/exhibitions/pioneers/elisa-leonidazamfirescu G europeana ‘‘Pioneers Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu’’ https://youtu.be/F8rSerbDHoE video presentation