Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt (1923–2016): An instinct for poisons

She was a professor at the University of Erlangen, held two doctorates and had five children: the toxicologist Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt succeeded, among other things, in detecting traces of the insecticide parathion in blood, once a widely used means of committing murder.

Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt (née Mallinckrodt-Haupt) was born in Potsdam on 28 April 1923. She was the eldest of five children of head forester Johann Dietrich von Mallinckrodt and the renowned dermatologist Asta von Mallinckrodt-Haupt (1896–1960), who became Germany’s first female professor of dermatology in 1941. When the Second World War broke out, Marika was visiting her grandmother in Bamberg with one of her brothers. Her mother was in the USA at the time, and her father decided that, because of the war, the two children should not return to Cologne, where the family was then living. Thus, in March 1940, at the age of almost 17, she took her Abitur at the Neues Gymnasium in Bamberg. She was then conscripted into the Reich Labour Service. She dreamed of studying medicine, but this would have required her to serve four weeks longer in the Labour Service, which did not appeal to her at all. She therefore studied chemistry in Cologne and Munich from 1940 onwards.

In December 1942, she met the qualified civil engineer Herbert Geldmacher, whom she married in 1943. Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt sat her diploma examination in Munich in 1944. However, her subsequent doctoral studies made little progress. On the one hand, the young chemist had by then had her first child; on the other, working and living conditions in Munich deteriorated, as both the chemical institute and the flat were severely damaged by bombs.

Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt fled with her child to her grandmother in Bamberg, where her second child was born in 1945. At the University of Erlangen, she made another, this time successful, attempt to obtain her doctorate under Alwin Meuwsen, a renowned inorganic chemist. He is said to have remarked: “Mrs Geldmacher may have deceived me; she concealed from me the fact that she had two children! If I had known that, I would not have taken her on.” Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt was awarded her doctorate on 1 July 1948.

As, in her view, there were no positions for female chemists in the chemical industry at that time apart from in libraries, Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt enrolled to study medicine at the University of Erlangen in 1949. In July 1954, she obtained another doctorate, this time in medicine. In the same year, she gave birth to her third child, followed by her fourth in 1957 and her fifth in 1966. Evidently, the two-time doctoral graduate succeeded in balancing her career and family life. From 1954 to 1963, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Erlangen, latterly at the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminalistics. In 1964, she was granted teaching authorisation in forensic medical chemistry; six years later, she received a professorship and, finally, in 1978, a C3 chair.

Using funding from the German Research Foundation, Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt developed the University of Erlangen’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, where she worked for a total of 25 years, into an important centre for clinical-toxicological analysis. She received great recognition for developing a method to detect minute quantities of the insecticide parathion (E 605) in blood, once a widely used means of committing murder and suicide. In addition to forensic toxicology and forensic and clinical-toxicological analysis, ecogenetics was one of her main research areas. This field examines the genetically determined reactions of the human organism to environmental influences.

Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt was made emeritus in 1985. More than 130 publications and numerous textbooks bear witness to her scientific productivity. For her research findings in analysis and toxicology, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on ribbon in 1987. Marika Geldmacher-von Mallinckrodt died in Erlangen on 23 December 2016, aged 93.

Literature
German Chemical Society (GDCh): Female chemists – they existed and still exist, 2003, p. 32

S. M. Schwarzl, Nachrichten aus der Chemie 51, 2003, p. 732