Dr. Paula Blum with Students in the Chemistry Lab (1914)

Laboratory science turns observable information about the natural world into usable knowledge through experiment, verification, description, and interpretation. It was comprehensively represented across the landscape of German learning in the modern period. Included in its embrace by the turn of the twentieth century were professionally ambitious women who attended university in ever-greater numbers and who hoped that the prestige of science would buoy their reputations while the money generated by the German economy filled their pockets. This photograph of research chemist Paula Blum and her students appeared in Über Land und Meer [Over Land and Sea], one of Germany’s leading illustrated journals for family entertainment.