PSU Magazine Fall 1990

erect, because I knew that if we ever had a chance, we could do it." And "do it" is just what Gert Rempfer did. There were several other women in physics when she was a graduate student. Her professor' s wife was a physicist, and there was a woman on the physics faculty there at University of Was hington. So at least there were a few role models and kindred spirits. But this was in sp ite of the , fact that there weren 't many jobs in the field for women. Of her own attempts to find work after graduate school, Rempfer recalls: "I got a letter of rejection from one Midwest state university saying, 'We don't hire women in this department. ' But you just accepted the way thinl!,S were and just went ahead," she says philosophically. One of the places Rempfer and her husband were employed was Antioch College in Ohio during the early ' 50s. But their teaching contracts were not renewed following the couple's efforts to prevent the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted in a controversial tri al of se lling top-sec ret data to the USSR. " People pretty much agree now that they got railroaded," says Rempfer. And the Rempfers subseq uently lost teaching positions at Fisk University in Tennessee for their support of a white mathematics professor, fired for enrolling hi s daughter in an all-black grade school which was much closer than the more acceptable all-white school located across town . "You get sort of a ' progress ive tilt,' living through the Depression," Rempfer contends, thinking of those controversies. '"You knew there was something wrong during the Depress ion because there were all those willing hands , plenty of supplies, plenty of things needed, yet somehow they couldn 't get them all together. It caused you to question the system." The Rempfers were traditionali sts in one area however. They did decide to have a family and raised four children. It was difficult being a working mother, Rempfer remembers. " It may have been too much [to both work and parent]. I didn't take much time off work for the kids , but all my spare time I focused on them," she says. " I knew how to do a lot of things of interest to children; so I think the kids had a good PSU 16 time with me. I know I had a good time with them. " At least she didn ' t tire of her children as some stay-at-home mothers might, Rempfer recall s. And her research was not something she could easily drop; it was too important to her. "I've been lucky," she admits. " I've never had to spend a large part of my life doing something I didn ' t like to do. Not many people can say that. " Nor can many people claim five patents for design of electron microscopes and their lenses and 40 years of distinguished work in that fi eld. "They've made some original discoveries with the instrument," says Rempfer, but they' re still hoping for a major breakthrough, possibly in the area of genetic research. B etween 1960 and 1970, Rempfer worked part time with Tektronix Inc. in Beaverton, where she developed an electron optical bench, in wh ich electron optical systems could be tested. In 1965, Rempfer was instrumental in setting up an electron microscope and laboratory for undergraduate use at Portland State. And for nearl y 20 years, Rempfer - along with the University of Oregon ' s Dr. 0. Hayes Griffith and a small staff - designed, built, and increasingly perfected the world 's on ly ultra-high vacuum photo emission electron microscope used for biological research. Rempfer' s work includes research on correcting aberrations of electron len ses to provide greater clarity of the microscopic image. "When I first started out, electron microscopes were pretty glamorous," Rempfer recalls. "There were very few people in the field , and new things were being found out all the time. And still are. I've seen the microscope go from being a simple piece of apparatus to what it is today: a refined instrument close to its ultimate capabilities." Their photoelectron microscope, Rempfer says, is used in biological research rather than in metallurgy or inte– grated circuits, as are most others. The ultra-hi gh vacuum system eliminates contaminants such as oil vapors which would cover up the surface characteristics of a biological specimen. Light is shone on the spec imen, which emits low-energy electrons (negatively charged atomic particles) directl y, rather than from an external source - the way other electron microscopes work . The photoelectron microscope also reads different information than other microscopes. Much of that information is topographical , seeing the surface rather than the interior of a specimen. And since chemicals emit electrons at differing rates, researchers are able to identify chemically different areas in the samp le. "They ' ve made some original di scover– ies with the instrument that couldn't have been discovered some other way," says Rempfer, but they ' re still hoping for a major breakthrough, poss ibly in the area of genetic research. "What they hope to do is to make use of the differences in photoelectric properties of the different bases that make up the DNA strand," she explains. "Some region s along the strand will emit electrons more readily than other regions. If these differences could be imaged, then you 'd see patterns of varying brightness along the strand. And in a micrograph you cou ld see a long array of DNA. They call it fingerprinting. " " If we could read the genome (a chromo– somal unit with its genes containing DNA and hereditary characteristics), we could determine which people are likely to be troubled with diabetes, for instance, and they could be counseled on how to avoid it. Eventually, perhaps some of those defects could be eliminated," Rempfer says with enthusiasm. It is only in recent years that Dr. Rempfer' s work has begun to be recog– nized. This year, besides be ing honored in Seattle by the Electron Microscopy Society, she will be one of the featured (Continued on page 28)