Born: 4 November 1923, Austria
Died: 11 December 1965
Country most active: United States
Also known as: שולמית גולדהבר
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Sulamith Low Goldhaber was a high-energy physicist and molecular spectroscopist. Goldhaber was a world expert on the interactions of K+ mesons with nucleons and made numerous discoveries relating to them.
Her family moved to Palestine, where she spent her formative years. She attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she met her future husband, Gerson Goldhaber. They married in 1947, and both pursued doctoral degrees at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which they received in 1951. The Goldhaber family, including their son Amos Nathaniel, relocated to New York City when Gerson joined the physics department at Columbia University. Sulamith, with her background in physical chemistry, worked as an assistant to Jack Steinberger on high-energy experiments at the Nevis Laboratory of Columbia.
In the 1960s, they formed the “Goldhaber-Trilling Group” with George Trilling and made significant contributions to the field.
Tragically, during her time in Madras, Sulamith Goldhaber suffered a stroke, and exploratory surgery revealed a growing brain tumor. She passed away on December 11, 1965, without regaining consciousness.