Bleyman, Lea K.

Lea Kanner Bleyman was born into a Jewish family in Halle, Germany, of November 9, 1936. As an infant, she and her family fled Germany to France, where they remained for the duration of the war, even as her older sisters, Eva and Ruth, were evacuated to the United States by the Kindertransport Program of the humanitarian organization OSE ( Oeuvre de Sécours aux Enfants ).

Reunited in the United States in 1946, the Kanners settled in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Entering the local public schools, Lea found her first brush with science leavened by her first experience with gender bias, but undeterred, she pursued biology as an undergraduate at Brandeis University. After graduation in 1958, and marrying Michael A. Bleyman, a philosophy major, then studying law at New York University, Bleyman relocated to New York for two years, earning a master's degree from Columbia University. During her first forays as a graduate student into the world of protozoans, she encountered the work of her future mentor, Tracy S. Sonneborn, and was drawn ever deeper into ciliate genetic research.

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