Oppenheimer was born in Philadelphia, the only child of James H. Oppenheimer and Sylvia Stern. Her father, a physician, encouraged physical activity: sports at school and a personalized exercise regimen at home. She was tutored in French and piano, and developed a love of classical music, fine food, and travel.[1] Oppenheimer's interests in Art were eclectic. The collection she donated to Bryn Mawr includes jade, ivory, and bronze objects, landscape watercolors, and etchings by Pablo Picasso, Jacques Villon, Auguste Rodin, and Leonard Baskin.[2]
In 1937, Oppenheimer served as a Research Fellow at University of Rochester. In 1938, "Miss Op" joined the faculty of Bryn Mawr as a biologist.[4] Beginning in the early 1940s, Oppenheimer and geology professor Dorothy Wyckoff began teaching courses on the history of science. In the 1970s, Oppenheimer was instrumental in developing a cooperative graduate program in the history of science involving Bryn Mawr, the University of Pennsylvania, and the American Philosophical Society; the program lapsed after her retirement.[5]
Oppenheimer's experimental career grew from her graduate work with Fundulus heteroclitus, and she made significant contributions to teleost embryology. She was particularly interested in questions of inductions, differentiation capabilities, and regulation. Seven early papers were based upon grafting experiments and demonstrated that the dorsal lips of fish and amphibian embryos showed the same organizer activity. Oppenheimer also performed fate mapping experiments, described cell movements of gastrulation, and published a staging series for Fundulus embryos.[8]
Oppenheimer designed one of the four American experiments performed in the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. The experiment analyzed the effects of weightlessness on Fundulus embryos at different stages of development.[9]
History of science
Oppenheimer's work in the field included Essays in the History of Embryology and Biology (1967), which focused largely on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but ventured as far back as the sixteenth.[10] She also wrote biographical studies of Karl E. von Baer, Curt Herbst, and Ross Harrison. Her areas of particular interest included the relationship of embryological data to evolutionary theory and early physiological and surgical discoveries.[11]
Editing
As editor or member of the editorial board, Oppenheimer was involved with American Zoologist, Biological Abstracts, Excerpta Medica, Journal of Morphology, Journal of the History of Biology, and Quarterly Review of Biology.[12]
^Margaret Hollyday, "Oppenheimer, Jane Marion," Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century, Vol. 5, Susan Ware, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), Google Books (accessed 13 February 2015), 487.
^Joy Harvey and Marilyn Ogilvie, "Oppenheimer, Jane Marion (1911-1996)," The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey, and Margaret Rossiter, eds. (Routledge, 2003), Google Books (accessed 14 February 2015), 963-964.
