Papers of Gertrude Newmark Rothschild, 1913-2011

Professor of materials science and engineering, Gertrude Neumark Rothschild was born in Nuremberg, Germany, on April 29, 1927, the daughter of businessman Sigmund and Bertha Neumark. Her family was Jewish and fled Germany in 1935, living in Italy and Cuba before coming to the United States in 1939. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College (1948), and earned a master's degree from Radcliffe College (1949), and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University (1951). In 1950 she married Henry Rothschild, who had worked with Mauricio Hochschild, a mining entrepreneur in Bolivia, and who was a commodities trader at Philipp Brothers in New York. Gertrude Neumark Rothschild worked at Sylvania Research Laboratories (1952-1960) and at Philips Laboratories (1960-1985) before joining the faculty at Columbia in 1985. Many of her patented processes led to the development of blue and ultraviolet LEDs (light-emitting diodes) and other improvements in consumer products such as flat screen TVs and mobile phones. She was forced to defend many of her discoveries against patent infringements over the course of her career, and was successful in wresting $27 million in settlements and licensing fees from more than 40 companies. "I just want recognition for the work that I did, and I want to show that women can do science," she said. Her contributions to science and her pioneering role as a woman engineer were recognized by the establishment of the Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professorship in 2005, and a professorship in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics (both at Columbia University) in 2008. She died in Rye, New York, of heart failure in 2010.