Ida Rolf
| Ida Pauline Rolf | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
May 19, 1896 Bronx, New York |
| Died | March 19, 1979 (aged 82) Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Alma mater | Barnard College, Columbia University |
| Known for | Structural Integration |
Ida Pauline Rolf (May 19, 1896 – March 19, 1979) was a biochemist and the creator of Structural Integration or "Rolfing".
Rolf was born in New York City in the Bronx on May 19, 1896. An only child, her father, Bernard Rolf, was a civil engineer who built docks and piers on the east coast.
Rolf attended Barnard College and graduated in 1916 with a bachelor's degree. In 1917 she began her doctoral studies at Columbia University and, at about the same time, also began work at the Rockefeller Institute in the chemistry laboratory under the supervision of Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene. She earned her PhD in biological chemistry from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1920. Her dissertation was titled "Three Contributions to the Chemistry of the Unsaturated Phosphatides".
In the 1920s she was studying Yoga and Tantra with Pierre Bernard.
After graduating, Rolf continued to work with Levene at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. In 1918 she was promoted to assistant in the chemistry lab. In 1922, two years after receiving her PhD from Columbia, she was promoted to associate, then the highest non-tenured position for a scientist at Rockefeller.
From 1919 to 1927 she published 16 scholarly journal papers, mostly in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Her research was mostly laboratory studies on biochemical compounds lecithin and cephalin. With the exception of her doctoral dissertation, all of her published work was co-authored with Levene.
In 1926, Rolf left her academic work in New York. She took leave to study mathematics and atomic physics at the Swiss Technical University in Zurich and also biochemistry at the Pasteur Institute in France.
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