The scientific Hertha Spose He was born on September 1, 1895 in Neisse, Silesia (in present-day Poland). She first became a teacher, an accepted way at the time for women to be admitted to college. He then studied physics in Tübingen and Göttingen, both in Germany.
During his time at Berkeley, he worked on molecular spectra with Raymond Thayer Birge. Together, they developed the Birge-Spose method or the Birge-Spose graph, which provides a way to calculate the dissociation energy of a molecule from its vibrational spectrum. Spone returned to Göttingen, completed her habilitation, and was one of the first women to teach physics at a German university. During his time there, he worked with Edward Teller, known to chemists for the Jahn-Teller effect.
In 1934, Suppose she lost her position due to the Nazi party’s prejudices against women scientists. She emigrated to Norway and became a visiting professor at the University of Oslo. She then moved to the United States and, in 1936, was appointed a professor at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. In 1946, she married James Franck. He remained at Duke until his retirement in 1966, when he returned to Germany.
Suppose made important contributions to the application of quantum mechanics, molecular physics, and molecular spectroscopy. She is the author of the first monograph on molecular spectroscopy, published in 1935, and confirmed many predictions of quantum mechanics using spectroscopy. She was associate editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics in 1940–1943 and 1947–1950.
Suppose died in Ilten, Germany, on February 27, 1968. The Hertha Spuesta Prize of the German Physical Society, which honors outstanding young physical women, is named in her honor.