Negotiating Presence, Crafting Memory: The Elusive Life and Legacy of Hilde Levi

Hilde Levi (1909-2003) was a prolific, versatile, and successful physicist. During her 50-year scientific career, Levi conducted research on the frontiers of biophysics, taught radioisotope applications to medical professionals, pioneered radiocarbon dating of archaeological findings in Europe, helped produce the first Danish legislation on radioactive safety, and more. Despite her many and relatively recent achievements, Hilde Levi is almost forgotten today. In this essay, I draw on previously unstudied materials from the Niels Bohr Archive to paint a more complete picture of Hilde Levi's scientific career. I find that Levi employed complex social strategies to negotiate her presence in male-dominated spaces and advance her career, sometimes fulfilling rather than defying traditional gender roles. Furthermore, when comparing her oral history with other sources such as newspaper clippings, publications, and correspondence, I find that she crafted a historical memory which conceivably contributed to the forgetting of her as a successful scientist. This paper stands in conversation with and contributes to earlier work on how women in science create public personas, shape their own historical memory, and navigate other minority identities, such as being Jewish and a refugee.