Ajzenberg-Selove, Fay (1926–)
Ajzenberg-Selove, Fay (1926–)
German-born American nuclear physicist. Name variations: Aisenberg. Born in Berlin, Germany, 1926; dau. of Moisei Abramovich Aisenberg and Olga (Naiditch) Aisenberg; m. Walter Selove (physicist), 1955; awarded doctorate from University of Wisconsin, Madison (1952).
Of Russian-Jewish descent, fled Europe (1940); enrolled as an engineering student at the University of Michigan, the only woman in her class, but later focused on physics; taught at Smith College, worked at the Van de Graaff Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and began to collaborate with Thomas Lauritsen of the California Institute of Technology; with Lauritsen, produced the annual compilation, Energy Levels of Light Nuclei, for several decades; took a tenured position at Haverford College while husband became an associate professor at University of Pennsylvania, then accepted an untenured position at the University of Pennsylvania (1970); was the 1st woman elected to a leadership position in the American Physical Society; successfully sued to obtain a full professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the 2nd female professor its School of Arts and Sciences; author of many scientific articles.
See also autobiography, A Matter of Choices: Memoirs of a Female Physicist (Rutgers University Press, 1994); and Women in World History.