But! There was a but: Dr. Magda Staudinger, his second wife! She was a highly
cultivated and a highly educated personality; maybe a little bit on the formal side, on
the cooler side of life. She was the daughter of the ambassador of Litauen (Lithuania)
in Germany. Already multilingual as a child, she studied biology, got her Ph.D., and
after her marriage she became an emotional and patriotic fighter for her husband’s
“German macromolecules”. Magda Staudinger knew pretty well that her husband
enjoyed the mornings with the two young Ph.D. students and she was glad about this.
But, she also was aware of the fact that during these hours he also delighted in talking
about “his old days”. This was a little bit too much for her! In her opinion, a Ph.D.
student had to work with her husband, and there was no time to listen to old and very
often pretty personal stories of a Nobel Prize winner (Fig. 2).
Here is what one could call a pretty honest protocol of one of my morning
working sessions with Hermann Staudinger in those days (1956):
09:00 h A friendly but short welcome was followed by around 30–40 min discussion about my
little changes on the chapter of the Arbeitserinnerungen discussed a day before
(formulae, references, new results etc.).
10:00 h By this time, Staudinger had already started to talk about his old days, different places,
colleagues, and very personal impressions of these periods. A wonderful session of
science history for a young Ph.D. student! From time to time he stopped talking,
listened, continued talking – and then it would happen: Magda Staudinger opened the
other door of their big private library and there was silence between him and me from
this very moment on! She walked across the room and directed a short serious look at
us, a look full of opinions! He tried to look as relaxed and comfortable as possible;
I tried to be neutral. She went to the bookshelf, picked out a book – probably any book –
looked at her husband again, and left the room.
(continued)
Fig. 2 Magda Staudinger and her husband (1956)
A Moment of Reflection: Sixty Years After the Nobel Prize for Hermann Staudinger
5
cultivated and a highly educated personality; maybe a little bit on the formal side, on
the cooler side of life. She was the daughter of the ambassador of Litauen (Lithuania)
in Germany. Already multilingual as a child, she studied biology, got her Ph.D., and
after her marriage she became an emotional and patriotic fighter for her husband’s
“German macromolecules”. Magda Staudinger knew pretty well that her husband
enjoyed the mornings with the two young Ph.D. students and she was glad about this.
But, she also was aware of the fact that during these hours he also delighted in talking
about “his old days”. This was a little bit too much for her! In her opinion, a Ph.D.
student had to work with her husband, and there was no time to listen to old and very
often pretty personal stories of a Nobel Prize winner (Fig. 2).
Here is what one could call a pretty honest protocol of one of my morning
working sessions with Hermann Staudinger in those days (1956):
09:00 h A friendly but short welcome was followed by around 30–40 min discussion about my
little changes on the chapter of the Arbeitserinnerungen discussed a day before
(formulae, references, new results etc.).
10:00 h By this time, Staudinger had already started to talk about his old days, different places,
colleagues, and very personal impressions of these periods. A wonderful session of
science history for a young Ph.D. student! From time to time he stopped talking,
listened, continued talking – and then it would happen: Magda Staudinger opened the
other door of their big private library and there was silence between him and me from
this very moment on! She walked across the room and directed a short serious look at
us, a look full of opinions! He tried to look as relaxed and comfortable as possible;
I tried to be neutral. She went to the bookshelf, picked out a book – probably any book –
looked at her husband again, and left the room.
(continued)
Fig. 2 Magda Staudinger and her husband (1956)
A Moment of Reflection: Sixty Years After the Nobel Prize for Hermann Staudinger
5