Paula Hertwig

Paula Hertwig was the daughter of the biologist Oskar Wilhelm August Hertwig (1849-1922). Her uncle was Richard Carl Wilhelm Theodor von Hertwig (1850-1937), the founder of experimental zoology. She studied zoology and botany in Berlin, and in 1915 became Ph.d. She entered the anatomical-biological institute of the Berlin medical faculty as well as the institute og genetical research (Vererbungsforschung), Berlin-Dahlem, and was habilitated for zoology in 1919 at her Alma mater. Paula Hertwig thus became the first German woman to complete her post-doctoral studies.

She became professor extraordinary in 1926 and in 1927 she assumed the chair of human inheritance at the medical faculty in Berlin, and in 1940 she became head of the zoological department of the institute for inheritance research, now incorporated in the university. After the war she mas made in charge of the newly established biological institute of the medical faculty at the University of Halle as well as a chair in general biology.

Paul Hertwig was a pioneer in radiation genetics and one of the first to see the dangers of radium and roentgen radiation

• Partielle Keimesschädigungen durch Radium- und Röntgenstrahlen.
  In Handbuch für Vererbungswissensch. Lfg. 1. Berlin, 1927.
• Regulation von Wachstum, Entwicklung und Regeneration durch Umweltfaktoren.
  With Günther Hertwig (1888-).
  Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie. Volume 16, 1. Berlin, 1930.