Explorers is a series of profiles on researchers and scientists from Duke’s first century who helped establish the start-up young university’s scholarly credentials and reputation for boundary-breaking work. Their explorations laid the foundation for important later discoveries and the university’s rise to its current standing as a world-class research institution.
Hertha Sponer
Sponer, fleeing oppression and sexism in her native Germany empowered by the election of Adolph Hitler found a new home in America, where she became the first woman to hold a faculty post in Duke’s Department of Physics.
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In the summer of 1941, just months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Duke political science professor Paul Linebarger was on the ground in China with support from the Duke University Research Council.
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