1. Irene Fischer was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and inductee of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Hall of Fame.
12 Facts About Irene Fischer
1. 2.
Irene Fischer worked for the Alliance Israelite Universelle investigating pogroms in Eastern Europe and raised money in the US and Western Europe to help victims.
3.
In 1931 she married historian and geographer Eric Irene Fischer, who helped introduce American, as distinct from British, history to Vienna.
4.
The Irene Fischer family established and ran the 1843-founded Vienna Israelitische Kinderbewahranstalt, the first professional kindergarten and kindergarten teacher training school in Vienna, a place that became a refuge for immigrants to Vienna from Eastern Europe.
5.
Irene Fischer worked on stereoscopic projective geometry trajectories for John Rule at MIT.
6.
Irene Fischer taught mathematics at Brown and Nichols Preparatory School in Cambridge, and then at Sidwell Friends in Washington, DC.
7.
At the very beginning of her career in mathematics and geodesy, Dr Irene Fischer had quickly taught herself the basics of geodetic tables, datums, transformations, gravity studies, astronomy, long lines, flare triangulation, and guided missile ballistics.
8.
Irene Fischer was intrigued by research into post glacial uplift, and her geoid studies went hand in hand with investigations of the lingering effects of the last ice age.
9.
Irene Fischer disagreed with the established figure for the oblateness of the Earth, which had remained unchallenged since 1924.
10.
Irene Fischer was forbidden to use her updated figures in her own work because that result was in disagreement with the accepted literature.
11.
In commenting on the lack of faith others put on her research, Dr Irene Fischer goodheartedly quipped that the satellites had not accepted the accepted literature, either.
12.
Winner of many federal government service awards, Irene Fischer was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Karlsruhe, elected to the National Academy of Engineering, elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and inducted into the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Hall of Fame; the Learning Center at the new campus of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has been named in her honor.