Austrian Press Agency (APA) (06/12/2009)
Vienna – Chemist, novelist and playwright Carl Djerassi, chemist Alfred Bader and chemist/historian Robert Rosner are new honorary members of the Austrian Society for Research in Exile Studies in Vienna. There are three „representatives of Austrian exiles who, following their expulsion by the National Socialists, have committed themselves to the fields of science, business and culture and have made significant contributions in these fields.
Exile research will become “all the more indispensable,“ “when those who have experienced persecution and expulsion are no longer alive,“ said Carl Djerassi. It is for that reason that the 85 year-old is demanding finally to secure “public financial backing for the Austrian Society for Exile Research.“
Chemist and “Father of the Anti-baby Pill,“ author and art collector Carl Djerassi, was born in Vienna in 1923 into a Jewish family of medical doctors. He went into exile in the USA In 1938 via London. He earned a PhD in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, was research director at Syntex S.A. in Mexico and author of numerous scientific and literary publications. Djerassi lives in San Francisco, London and Vienna.
The chemist, art collector and benefactor Alfred Bader, born in Vienna in 1924 as the son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, fled to England in 1938 with the so-called “children’s transport.“ He was handed over to Canada as a prisoner of war. Bader studied in Canada and later in the USA at Harvard University in Cambridge. He is a co-founder of the US company Aldrich – today known as Sigma-Aldrich – which belongs to the world’s largest distributor of chemicals used in research. The sponsor of the Ignaz L. Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Chemist and historian Robert Rosner, born in Vienna in 1924, fled in 1939 to England with the “children’s transport“ following persecution by the National Socialists. He returned to Vienna in 1946, studied chemistry at the University of Vienna and became researcher and head of the sales division of Loba-Chemie founded in 1952. Following his retirement, Robert Rosner studied political science and history at the University of Vienna. He is vice president of the Society for the Documentation of Science and Technology.
The Society for Exile Research is organized as a non-profit and founded in 2002. The organization defines itself as a community of researchers interested in the topics of exile, emigration, victims of Fascist persecution by Fascism and National Socialism from Austria along with other fields having an inter-disciplinary nature.