Hertha Sponer, 1895-1968, was a German physicist who immigrated to the United States and came to Duke University in 1936, where she became the first woman on its Physics Department faculty. She conducted research and taught at Duke until 1965, supervising thirty-five masters and doctoral degree graduates. The Hertha Sponer Papers span the years 1917-1967 and comprise the correspondence, research, speeches, writings, and teaching materials of German physicist Hertha Sponer, who in 1936 became the first woman appointed to the faculty of the Duke University Department of Physics. The collection primarily documents her American career, especially her work in the areas of chemical physics, spectrum analysis, and molecular spectroscopy. Arranged in five series: Correspondence, Printed Materials, Professional Files, Research Files, and Writings and Speeches. The Correspondence Series covers the final two decades of her career, from the late 1940s to 1967, and primarily consists of letters about research with her numerous collaborators and co-authors. Some of her final letters discuss death of her husband, physicist James Franck, in 1964, and also allude to the death that same year of her Duke Physics Department associate and fellow German refugee, Hedwig Kohn. The Printed Materials Series holds offprints and reprints of Sponer's articles from the 1930s-1960s, plus a few articles by Franck. Sponer's teaching and administrative files, including correspondence with graduate students, appear in the Professional Files. The Research Files make up the largest series in the collection; these files document her research on many topics and articles and also contain much of the collection's correspondence. The Writings and Speeches Series gathers several papers and talks from the last half-dozen years of Sponer's professional career.
