1. Ida Pauline Rolf was a biochemist and the creator of the pseudoscientific practice of Structural Integration, later termed Rolfing, a type of manual therapy that claims to aligning the human body's so-called "energy field" and Earth's gravity.
11 Facts About Ida Rolf
1. 2.
Ida Rolf's father, Bernard Rolf, was a civil engineer who built docks and piers on the east coast.
3.
Ida Rolf graduated from Barnard College in 1916 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry.
4.
Ida Rolf was in the Mathematics Club, German Club, Vice President of the class of 1916, a member of the Young Women's Christian Assn.
5.
In 1917 she began her doctoral studies at Columbia University and, concurrently, Ida Rolf began work at the Rockefeller Institute as a chemical researcher.
6.
In 1920, Ida Rolf earned her PhD in biological chemistry under the supervision of Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene, of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
7.
Ida Rolf's dissertation was entitled "Three Contributions to the Chemistry of the Unsaturated Phosphatides", originally printed in three separate issues of "The Journal of Biological Chemistry".
8.
Ida Rolf studied yoga with Pierre Bernard which influenced her development of Rolfing.
9.
In 1922, two years after having received her PhD from Columbia, Ida Rolf was raised to associate, then the highest non-tenured position for a scientist at Rockefeller.
10.
Ida Rolf's research was primarily laboratory studies on biochemical compounds lecithin and cephalin.
11.
In 1926, Ida Rolf left her academic work in New York to study mathematics and atomic physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and biochemistry at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France.