JGSCT - About This Month's Program
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When: Sunday, September 15, 2024
Time: 1:30 pm How to Attend:
Genealogy to Preserve the Past and Educate the Living Ann M. Altman Ph.D., from Hamden, will talk to us about her roots in what is now the Czech Republic. Ann grew up in Bristol, England, the second child of two Czech Jews who escaped the Holocaust, in which all four of her grandparents perished. Ann was educated at the University of Cambridge and received her doctorate in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 1974. While bringing up two children, she did research at Yale and, working with melanoma cells, she discovered a new reaction in the biosynthesis of melanin. After hitting the glass ceiling, she left Yale and started her own editorial business, working predominantly for the Japanese and authoring four books for Japanese scientists. She also translated important historical works about Easter Island from French. |
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In 1999, Ann was elected to the Hamden Legislative Council and, after three terms, she was appointed to the Planning and Zoning Commission, of which she became the first woman chair. Her political work led to many visits to Mongolia, where she lectured all over the country about public participation in democratic processes. She received many awards, including a medal from the President of Mongolia for her assistance in the repatriation of a magnificent fossilized Tyranosaurus bataar.
In retirement, Ann has researched her family’s fascinating history and become deeply involved in the establishment of the Moravian Museum of Jewish History in Brno, in the Czech Republic.
The story that Ann will tell us includes appearances by the first President of Czechoslovakia (and his son); a Hollywood movie star; the so-called Anne Frank of Norway; the Emperor Franz Josef at Schönbrunn, the stepfather of the wife of George Stephanopoulos; and a previously unknown branch of her family, direct descendants of her great grandfather, still living in her mother’s hometown, the fruit of an affair between her great uncle and a maid.
Ann will recount these stories in the context of documents that she has donated for archiving, materials that she has donated to museums, and the way in which she is bringing her grandparents’ stories back to the people of Moravia, from whence they were so brutally removed by the Nazis, at whose hands they perished.
In retirement, Ann has researched her family’s fascinating history and become deeply involved in the establishment of the Moravian Museum of Jewish History in Brno, in the Czech Republic.
The story that Ann will tell us includes appearances by the first President of Czechoslovakia (and his son); a Hollywood movie star; the so-called Anne Frank of Norway; the Emperor Franz Josef at Schönbrunn, the stepfather of the wife of George Stephanopoulos; and a previously unknown branch of her family, direct descendants of her great grandfather, still living in her mother’s hometown, the fruit of an affair between her great uncle and a maid.
Ann will recount these stories in the context of documents that she has donated for archiving, materials that she has donated to museums, and the way in which she is bringing her grandparents’ stories back to the people of Moravia, from whence they were so brutally removed by the Nazis, at whose hands they perished.
