Background
Bramley was born Jenny Rosenthal in Moscow on July 31, 1909.
Bramley was born Jenny Rosenthal in Moscow on July 31, 1909.
She attended high school in Berlin and earned her bachelor"s degree from the University of Paris in 1926 at age 16.
She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in physics from an American institution, and she was the second woman elected as a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She holds numerous patents on Electroluminescence and Electro-optics and is cited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers as being "well known for her innovative work in lasers.” After graduating from New York University Bramley did research at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan before teaching at Brooklyn College and New York University. Along with Gregory Breit, Bramley was the first to calculate the effect of extended nuclear charge on hyperfine structure and isotopic shift - an effect still known as the Breit-Rosenthal correction. She contributed to a number of other fields including applying electroluminescence to solid state displays and storage devices and developing high efficiency lasers.
Bramley also invented coding techniques and methods of decoding pictorial information, later used in classified studies.
During World World War II Bramley conducted some research in secret which she was unable to publish at the time. In the 1950s she worked at Monmouth Junior College where she served as head of the mathematics department.