Education
She attended the University of Göttingen where she studied several sciences.
She attended the University of Göttingen where she studied several sciences.
After having been expelled from Germany by the Nazis she moved to London, England. She then obtained her doctorate in botany under Professor Martin Möbius at the University of Frankfurt. She then became a teacher in a private school in Dresden.
She received a fellowship from the American Association of University Women in 1934 after being dismissed from her position in Germany and used the funds to continue her career in England at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London.
She pioneered the study of mycoplasma. In 1935, she discovered and cultured unusual strains of bacteria that lacked a cell wall, naming these strains "L-form bacteria" after the Lister Institute where she was working at the time.
In 1943 she met the pediatrician Professor Edmund Nobel. Also Jewish, he had been born in Hungary and graduated in 1910 from the University of Vienna.
When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938 he was Chief Physician at the Mautner Makhof Children"s Hospital in Vienna.
He was expelled from his post and eventually came to England. He held positions at Queen Mary"s Hospital, for children in Carshalton and later physician at Paddington Green Children"s Hospital. Her husband, Edmund, died in 1946 from a heart complaint.
She is honored by the International Organization for Mycoplasmology by the Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel Award, given every other year to an outstanding mycoplasma researcher
The final and highest honour was the Robert Koch Medal, bestowed on her by the President of the then Federal Republic of Germany, Karl Carstens, in Bonn in 1980.
Robert Koch Institute. The International Organization for Mycoplasmology.