Margarete von Wrangell

Margarethe Mathilde von Wrangell, after 1928 Princess Andronikow, née Baroness von Wrangell (7 January 1877 in Moscow – 21 March 1932 in Hohenheim) was a Baltic German agricultural chemist and the first female full professor at a German university.

Margarete von Wrangell originated from the old Baltic German noble house of Wrangel. She spent her childhood in Moscow, Ufa and Reval (today Tallinn). She attended a German girls’ school in Tallinn. After passing the teachers' qualifying examination with honours in 1894, she gave private lessons in science for several years. She also occupied herself in painting and writing short stories. Attending a botany course at University of Greifswald in 1903 became a turning point in her life. As of spring 1904, she studied Natural Sciences in Leipzig and Tübingen and, in 1909, received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Tübingen summa cum laude. The topic of her dissertation was 'Isomerism of Formyl-glutaconic Acid ester and its bromine derivatives'.

This was followed by years of further scientific study and travel. In 1909, she worked as an assistant at the Agricultural Experimental Station in Dorpat; in 1910, she participated in the work of William Ramsay in London in the field of radiation; in 1911, she became an assistant at the Institute of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry in Strasbourg; and in 1912, she worked for several months with Marie Curie in Paris. At the end of 1912, she became head of the Estonian Agricultural Experimental Station of the Agricultural Association in Reval. Her main task was overseeing seed, feeds and fertilizers. In the course of the Russian October Revolution, her institute was closed; she was arrested, but managed to flee to Germany in 1918.

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