by Josh Forman, Head of Science, Education & Outreach
Elisabeth was born on the 22nd of September in 1912, as Elisabeth Wechsler in Frankfurt, Germany.
Elisabeth was a true halutz (pioneer) and considered the ‘mother of genetics’ in Israel. Not only was she in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, but she established labs and departments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the first Genetic Counselling Clinic in Israel, was the first president of Genetics Circle of Israel (which became the Genetic Society of Israel) and even had some time for research in Human Genetics, with a special focus on Jewish hereditary diseases such as Tay-Sachs Disease.
Elisabeth was born into an Orthodox family in Frankfurt am Main, in 1912. A high achieving student throughout her childhood, she went on to study medicine at the University of Frankfurt in 1932. Unfortunately, after only 1 year of study, she had to drop out due to the rise to power of the Nazi party, and the anti-Jewish laws they brought in.
She moved to London, where she unable to pursue her medical studies. Instead, she read Zoology and Botany, and upon received her B. Sc (Hons) she emigrated, along with her husband Joseph Goldschmidt, to Palestine.
In 1938 she took up a position as a research assistant at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of Zoology. She submitted her PhD thesis in 1942 and moved up to the position of Junior Assistant. During this time, she actually earnt her living teaching in schools, as university-based work was voluntary for most researchers in Palestine at this point in time.
In 1950 she was awarded a fellowship at the American University Women’s Association, and this took her to research positions at Columbia University and the University of California in Berkeley. This lasted for a year, and in 1951 Elizabeth returned to the Hebrew University and her research intensified. As well as research, Goldschmidt founded a teaching programme of genetics, including teaching genetics to medical students. In 1952, when this began, it was not a key component of a medical student’s study and was revolutionary at the time.
Goldschmidt continued to research genetics in Drosophila (fruit flies), which took her across Europe – collaborating on techniques with group in Zurich, Copenhagen and Milan. As time went on, she became more and more interested in human genetics. This was in no small way due to the unique opportunity that 1950’s Israel presented in population genetics. It was around this time that Elizabeth established the first Genetic Counselling Clinic in Israel, along with physicians at Hadassah Hospital.
In 1955 Goldschmidt became the first president of the Genetics Circle, which preceded the Genetics Society of Israel. Elisabeth was a key proponent in the campaign to stop the 11th International Congress of Genetics being held in Germany. Primarily because this was where, under the Nazi regime, physicians and scientists perpetrated abuses of genetics. She was ultimately successful, and the congress was moved to The Hague in 1963.
Elisabeth viewed the ‘melting pot’ of Israeli society very much from the view of a geneticist. What she saw was the coming together of groups of people, from diverse parts of the world with distinct inherited diseases. She found this fascinating, as she understood the scientific insights and discoveries that could be made from the new migrant groups in the new state, each with distinct genetic traits, merging their DNA over the next few generations. This would be the first time scientists could track this in ‘real time’.
Elisabeth went on to research Tay-Sachs disease, which was already known to be a ‘Jewish Genetic Disorder’, and subsequently moved on to hereditary haemolytic disease, which were present in some communities.
In 1961, along with Chaim Sheba and Raphael Falk, she convened a Conference of Human Population Genetics. This conference brought together all scientists working on the genetics of the new Israeli population – enhancing collaboration and information sharing, whilst also demonstrating her leadership qualities in a relatively new field.
