Born: 16 December 1878, Switzerland
Died: 13 September 1968
Country most active: Switzerland
Also known as: NA
Gertrud Johanna Woker was a Swiss suffragist, biochemist, toxicologist and peace activist. She wrote for more than 20 years detailing the dangers of chemical substances on the human body and campaigned against the use of poison gas in warfare.
She became the first Swiss woman to earn a PhD at the University of Berne in 1903 when she completing her doctoral program in chemistry, physics and botany, but she was unable to find a position in her field and became a high school gymnastics teacher before deciding to study at Berlin University as a guest, since women were forbidden to be students.
She returned home and worked in Konstanecki’s laboratory, synthesizing a-naphthoflavanol, flavanone, and flavone. By 1907, she held the title of Probleme der katalytischen Forschung (Problems of Catalytic Research) at the University of Bern. She was promised an adjunct professorship, which would make her the first woman in Switzerland to hold that title, but with the onset of World War I, the government claimed that they could not promote her because of financial strain. Nonetheless, Woker was the head of the physical-chemical biology laboratory at the University of Berne from 1911 until her retirement. There, she conducted studies on peroxidase and catalase, detection methods for natural products and in particular color reactions on sterols, but her main focus of interest was poisonous gas in war. From 1910 to 1931, Woker wrote four volumes regarding the dangers of chemical substances to the human body. She was denied the title of professorship again in 1916, this time by a tied vote.
In April 1924, Woker and Swedish chemist and activist Naima Sahlbom attended the American Chemical Society’s conference in Washington. They and several other scientists were exposed to tear gas while observisng a practice of chemical weapons at an arsenal. At the Fourth International Congress of the WILPF in 1924, Sahlbom, Woker and Ester Akesson-Beskow announced the creation of the Committee Against Scientific Warfare, of which Sahlbom was the chairwoman. The following year, Woker published “The coming war of Poison Gas” and sent appeals to Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, expressing concern about the use of mustard gas and its effect on the human body.
n 1933, she was finally granted the title of professorship – 30 years after completing her PhD. She retired in 1951 and wrote a two-volume book about the “chemistry of natural alkaloids 1953-1956”.