One of late laser pioneer Gisela Eckhardt’s legacies: A new endowed physics professorship at Goethe University
Olena Fedchenko appointed to new Gisela and Wilfried Eckhardt endowed professorship for experimental physics – Funding provided by the estate of former physics student Gisela Eckhardt – City of Frankfurt names central square after Raman laser’s invention
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As the incumbent to the new Gisela and Wilfried Eckhardt endowed professorship, Olena Fedchenko decisively strengthens the experimental competence in solid state physics at Goethe University’s Faculty of Physics. (Photo: Kateryna Fedorenko)
view moreCredit: Kateryna Fedorenko
Until a few years before her death, it was unthinkable that laser specialist Gisela Eckhardt, inventor of the Raman laser, would one day bequeath about €11.5 million to Goethe University Frankfurt. After all, Eckhardt had turned her back on the university with resentment after completing her doctorate here in 1958 and emigrating to the U.S. Sixty years later, however, the erstwhile physics student designated “her” Goethe University as her heir, thereby laying the foundations for an endowed professorship in experimental physics – to which solid-state physicist Prof. Olena Fedchenko was appointed this month. The city of Frankfurt has honored the late laser pioneer by naming one of the squares in its Bockenheim district after Gisela Eckhardt. Fedchenko will give her inaugural lecture as part of the honorary celebrations on January 30.
FRANKFURT. It is thanks to the legacy of late laser specialist Gisela Eckhardt that Goethe University was recently able to establish a professorship for experimental physics in the field of the solid-state spectroscopy of electronically correlated materials and now fill it with solid-state physicist Olena Fedchenko. A Frankfurt native, Gisela Eckhardt is the first alumna whose bequest – in addition to signifying a late reconciliation with her alma mater – has enabled the university to set up an endowed professorship. When Gisela Eckhardt, née Elsholtz, began her longed for physics studies in 1947, she was the only female student in her year, and soon experienced the everyday obstacles encountered by a woman in a male-dominated research environment. A delayed diploma exam, a delayed doctoral thesis – even decades later, Gisela Eckhardt still lamented the time she lost during her studies as a result of her doctoral supervisor. By that time, she had long since moved to the U.S.A., where she emigrated in 1958 with her husband – whom she had met during their common student days. In Malibu, California, the Mecca of physics research at the time, she was not only able to fulfill her dream of conducting research. Thanks to a discovery in laser research in 1962, her renown spread far beyond her own institute: Harvard University named her one of the early pioneers of laser physics.
A feature in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about precisely this discovery – the Raman laser, which is still widely used in medicine, chemistry and biology today – brought Gisela Eckhardt back in touch with her university in 2017. At age 90, at the invitation of Goethe University, she visited her former faculty – which meanwhile had three female professors and several female young researchers. Childless and already widowed, Gisela Eckhardt decided to leave to her university the funds for an endowed professorship in experimental physics. The laser physics pioneer passed away on January 30, 2020, at the age of 93. In her last will and testament, she bequeathed more than €11.5 million to Goethe University: The long-term financing of the new endowed professorship, which bears her name and that of her husband Wilfried Eckhardt, is made possible by an endowment fund’s earnings.
Goethe University President Prof. Enrico Schleiff is very grateful for the alumna’s late reconciliation with her alma mater, which was made possible by the initiative shown by Private Hochschulförderung [the Private University Funding Office] and the physics faculty. “There is one thing Gisela Eckhardt, donor of the new professorship for experimental physics, wanted all her life: to conduct research as a physicist, freely and without restrictions – something that was hardly possible for her as a woman in post-war Germany. I am certain it would give her twice the joy to see that not only were we able to fill the professorship with a woman, but we were able to specifically recruit Olena Fedchenko to it – a brilliant scientist who conducts research in a similar field to Gisela Eckhardt herself. Olena Fedchenko is a great asset to our physics faculty, where she strengthens our experimental expertise in solid state physics.”
Experimental physicist Olena Fedchenko receives Gisela and Wilfried Eckhardt endowed professorship
The thematic proximity of experimental physicist Olena Fedchenko's area of expertise to laser pioneer Gisela Eckhardt would certainly have been in line with the wishes of the new Gisela and Wilfried Eckhardt endowed professorship’s donor. On January 1, 2025, this professorship was assumed by Olena Fedchenko, an expert who is particularly renowned in the field of electron spectroscopy, which holds great potential for use in modern solid-state research. “With this expertise, Olena Fedchenko strengthens one of our faculty’s three scientific research foci, that on 'condensed matter and quantum materials',” says Prof. Cornelius Krellner, managing director of the Institute of Physics. “Here in Frankfurt, we already have broad theoretical and experimental expertise when it comes to analyzing the complex problem of interacting particles in solids. With Olena Fedchenko's research group in experimental electron spectroscopy, we have now added a crucial link bridging theory and experiment – providing us with the key that is essential to unlocking important future technologies.”
Olena Fedchenko studied and completed her doctorate in physics and mathematics at Sumy State University (Ukraine), specializing in solid-state physics. After working as a research associate at that university’s Institute of Applied Physics, she moved to Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2015. As a postdoctoral researcher here, she was involved in two collaborative research centers and several projects run by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, contributing to the development of photoemission technology at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron). In 2019 and 2024, her work was nominated as DESY Highlight of the Year; the latter year she was also nominated for the Charles S. Fadley Award for outstanding contributions to basic research in photoemission spectroscopy with hard X-rays.
Inauguration of Frankfurt’s new Gisela Eckhardt Square: Festive event held January 30 also features Prof. Olena Fedchenko’s inaugural lecture
Gisela Eckhardt will also receive a special honor in the city where she was born: At the suggestion of the Bockenheim local advisory council and the Physikalischer Verein, the City of Frankfurt is naming a previously nameless square on Ohmstraße after the Frankfurt native. Gisela Eckhardt Square will be officially inaugurated on January 30, the fifth anniversary of Gisela Eckhardt's death.
Prof. Dr. Olena Fedchenko will give her inaugural lecture during the subsequent festive event organized by the Physikalischer Verein, of which Gisela Eckhardt has been an honorary member since 2018 (time and place: 7 p.m., Robert-Mayer-Straße 2, 60325 Frankfurt; https://www.physikalischer-verein.de/veranstaltung/a-microscope-for-the-reciprocal-space.html).
Further information on the inauguration of the new Gisela Eckhardt Square is available here (in German): https://www.physikalischer-verein.de/veranstaltung/einweihung-des-gisela-eckhardt-platzes.html
You can find a more detailed account of how Goethe University came to endow a professorship for experimental physics here (in German): https://aktuelles.uni-frankfurt.de/forschung/wie-die-goethe-universitaet-zu-einer-stiftungsprofessur-fuer-experimentalphysik-kam/
