Hildegard Kallmann Collection

Hildegard Korf was born in 1908 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. She studied philosophy at the University of Berlin and later studied metallurgy at the city's Technische Hochschule. While at the University of Berlin she met Julie Braun-Vogelstein, with whom she maintained a life-long friendship. Since 1936 she worked at the Dresden Zeiss Works.

Under the Nuremberg Laws, Hildegard and her brother K. Frank Korf were considered "Mischlinge zweiten Grades," with their Jewish ancestry from the Mossner family on their mother's side. When Julie Braun-Vogelstein left Germany for the United States in 1935, she left her Zehlendorf estate in the care of Hildegard Korf and of her attorney, Curt Kallmann. In 1939 Curt Kallmann called Hildegard Korf for assistance after hearing the Gestapo were about to arrest him; she aided him in escaping to Stockholm, Sweden. In Stockholm Curt Kallmann suffered a nervous breakdown which prevented him from immigrating alone to the United States in spite of having a visa. Upon recommendation of the American consul Hildegard Korf and Curt Kallmann got married, and she escorted him to the United States by way of Siberia and Japan.

While in the United States, Hildegard Kallmann pursued her scientific interests at the University of California at Los Angeles, receiving her Bachelor's degree in physics in 1945, her Master's in 1947 and her doctorate in 1955, including studies in the upper atmosphere, thermodynamics, and atomic and molecular physics. Her dissertation was titled "A Study of the Structure of the Ionosphere." In 1947 she joined the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California as a research analyst, becoming a research physicist in 1953 and remaining with them until 1964. She also became a consultant to the U.S. Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a member of the National Academy of Science, and authored a number of papers related to research on the atmosphere, altitude, and space, among other related subjects. In addition, she was chair of the international Committee for Space Research (COSPAR) in Brussels, Belgium, which devised the "international reference atmosphere" to determine orbit and flight planning for satellites and spacecrafts in the upper atmosphere. In 1964 she became guest professor at the observatory at the University of Utrecht, Holland.

Hildegard and Curt Kallmann divorced in 1958; she married Jan Bijl. She died of a heart attack in the Hague, Netherlands on November 7, 1968.