by Gidon Schwartz, Education & Outreach Executive
The highest accolade any scientist can win is the Nobel Prize. This prize was set up so that Alfred Nobel’s legacy was to improve the world, after his invention of dynamite – for which he earned the moniker ‘the merchant of death’. Therefore, there is a certain irony that many incredible people have been stopped from reaching great scientific heights due to dynamite, namely in the form of war. As we mark International Holocaust Memorial Day today, we thought we would take the time to highlight two of these: the Belarussian biochemist couple Elisabeth and Eugene Wollman.
Elisabeth and Eugene Wollman were early pioneers in the study of bacteriophages. This is a type of virus which infects only bacteria, and they are used to learn how viruses invade our cells and are a major research focus for drug development.
Eugene Wollman’s parents were both highly academic – his mother, Sonia, was a mathematician and his father, Mordechai, a doctor. During Eugene’s childhood they moved to New York in the late 19th century but struggled to make ends meet. Mordechai sadly passed away from an unknown disease and subsequently, Sonia decided to take her two young children back to her hometown of Minsk and pursue a career as a maths teacher. After finishing school, Eugene enrolled at the university of Liege in Belgium to study engineering. After graduating he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and complete a medical degree, before moving into medical research. He gained a scholarship to work in the world-renowned Pasteur Institute in Paris.
Meanwhile, Elisabeth, born Elisabeth Michelis, grew up in Minsk as the daughter of a businessman. Upon graduating from high school, she moved to Liege (after her mother’s friend Sonia Wollman mentioned her son was there) to study physics. However, at this point Eugene had already moved to work in Paris. He pleaded with Elisabeth to join him – clearly with intentions other than just scientific collaboration. After a time, she agreed to join him in Paris, and in the words of their grandson, “both families were not religious, but were immersed in the Jewish community, and the two were married in 1910 in a Jewish wedding, probably in Germany.”
Eugene spent his years at the Pasteur studying bacteria under Nobel Prize winner Elie Metchnikoff, a man who was extremely kind and supportive towards the Wollmans, to the extent that they ended up naming their son after him.
When World War I broke out, Eugene volunteered as a medic for the French army, initially in Paris, followed by postings in Africa and the Middle East. Whilst on his posting Eugene was constantly aware of injustices taking place around him, as his grandson recalled, “he was also a man of principle and wrote to Elisabeth about an incident at an officers’ club in Senegal where he intervened when two civilians were racially disparaging a black officer seated nearby.”
After the war, Eugene returned to the Pasteur Institute in a more senior role as a researcher and began his work into bacteriophages. Elisabeth, meanwhile, was not able to get a posting for research at the Pasteur Institute, despite her qualifications and motivation. This is likely because nobody wanted to employ her as a woman and, as the wife of a researcher, their family was already being supported. Eventually she managed to secure a voluntary role in a laboratory in the Institute. Unfortunately, this is a story that is all too common of the great women scientists who were not able to reach their potential without overcoming many barriers. In this time, she co-authored many papers until in 1920, she transitioned to work alongside her husband, albeit still in a voluntary capacity. They continued their work on bacteriophages and published many papers together, and individually, until 1929 when they migrated to Chile for a 3-year mission. This was to lead the early years of the Pasteur Institute’s ‘health institution’ in Santiago; the main perk of this was improved living conditions and a nice salary for the couple.
The Nazi invasion of France in 1940 caused a huge upheaval to the Wollmans lives. As the Nazis entered Paris, many of the scientists migrated south to continue their work free of the Nazis. Eugene sent his wife and young daughter Nadine south but volunteered to stay behind to prevent the Nazis from commandeering or destroying the Institute, as he spoke fluent German. In his diary, he recounts that the German officers wanted to establish their own laboratories at the Pasteur Institute, but he identified vacant buildings elsewhere in advance, managed to convince them that these would better suit their laboratory needs, and even drove there with them to show them the property, managing to save the Institute. After a few weeks, many Parisians returned including Elisabeth and Nadine, so that Elisabeth could resume her work at the Institute. Nadine began to follow in her mother’s footsteps, studying physics. Their son, Elie, remained in Lyon to study medicine; his professor was antisemitic but decided that he hated the Nazis more and so was happy to help Elie study and join the resistance.
This status quo was maintained, and they were able to conduct research together for a couple more years until arrests of Jews became more and more frequent. In March 1943 the police came to the Pasteur to arrest Eugene. The director of the Institute, at great personal risk, told the Nazis that Eugene was ill and hid him in the hospital wing where he was hidden for some time, only able to see his family on the occasional weekend. After a raid at their home, Elisabeth and Nadine were arrested and taken to a women’s prison in Paris. Due to Nadine’s husband’s connections, and him being non-Jewish, she was released and set about trying to contact her father. She arrived at the Institute just as Eugene was being arrested and never saw him again.
Eugene and Elisabeth were both taken to the Drancy internment camp, near Paris, before transportation by train to Auschwitz. They were likely killed in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. According to documentation obtained by the family, both were on train number 63, which left Drancy on December 17, and were murdered on December 22.
Elie Wollman continued his parents’ work, working alongside Andre Lwoff, a student of Eugene and Elisabeth. In 1965 Lwoff was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on bacteriophages. In his Nobel lecture, he credited Wollman with having ‘prophetic vision in the field’ and credited both Eugene and Elisabeth numerous times. Elie continued a successful career in biological research, as does his son Francis-André Wollman. Many other grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Elisabeth and Eugene Wollman have followed in their footsteps, pursuing careers in science and medicine. The Nazis may have succeeded in killing them, but not the path of their legacy.
