Noemie Benczer Koller

Koller was active in administrative duties also. She served as a member of the Physics Advisory Panel, US National Science Foundation (1973–76), and of the Panel on Nuclear Physics, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Physics and Astronomy (1983–84). She was the Director of the Nuclear Physics Laboratory from 1986 to 1989. At Rutgers, Koller served in the administration of the University as the Associate Dean for Sciences of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1992 to 1996, and was active in the American Physical Society (APS), serving on many national committees, as well as Chair of the 2,500-member APS Nuclear Physics Division. Koller is a strong supporter of women in science and has contributed a significant amount of research to the physics community internationally.

In the fall of 1960, Koller was hired at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. She was the first woman hired in the Physics department; in 1965, she became the first tenured female professor of Rutgers College.

While in graduate school at Columbia University in 1956, Noemie Benczer married fellow physics student Earl Leonard Koller. When Noemie took up her position at Rutgers, Earl was hired at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. The Kollers had two sons, David, a geologist, and Daniel, a physicist.

Koller was born Noemie Benczer in Vienna, Austria, on born August 21, 1933. Her father was a Ph.D. chemist and her mother worked as a bookbinder. The family moved frequently in her early childhood due to the turbulence of World War II. Her family moved from Vienna to Paris, and then subsequently moved further south in France several times to escape the German invasion. They subsequently emigrated to Cuba, and then to Mexico where she attended the Lycée Franco-Mexicain beginning in 1943. Upon completing high school at the Lycée in 1951, she traveled to New York to receive a college education. She was accepted into Barnard College, the women's college associated with Columbia University, which did not accept female applicants at the time. She entered Barnard with standing as a junior, as she received credit for the humanities courses at the Lycée, and was able to attain a B.A. in Physics in two years. She entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1953; she received her M.S. in 1955 and earned her Ph.D. in 1958 in experimental physics. She continued at Columbia as a postdoctoral research associate until 1960.