Doris (Elfriede) Schachner (30 May 1904 in Bockwa near Zwickau – 1 April 1988 in Heidelberg) née Korn was the first female German professor for Mineralogy and Honorary Senator of the RWTH Aachen University.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Schachner studied mineralogy at the universities in Heidelberg, Freiburg i. Br., and Innsbruck.[1] She completed her doctorate at the Heidelberg University in 1928 and she completed her habilitation at the TH Aachen in 1933.[1] From 1933 to 1940, she was a lecturer at the TH Aachen.[1] At the end of the second world war (from 1941 to 1945), she worked at the Brno University of Technology.[7] In 1946, she returned to Aachen.[7] In 1948, she became an extraordinary professor at the TH Aachen.[1] From 1949 to 1972, she was an ordinary professor at the TH Aachen.[1] Based on her initiative, the Institute of Crystallography at the TH Aachen was founded in 1963.[2][8] In 1984, she became a Honorary Senator at the TH Aachen.[1] Her daughter Melitta Schachner Camartin was a professor for neurobiology at the University of Hamburg.[7]
Schachner was a pioneer in ore microscopy.[9]
She was a Honorary Senator of the RWTH Aachen University.[2][3] Two minerals are named after her: Schachnerite and Para-Schachnerite.[9][10] A street in Aachen is named after her.