Ida Pauline Rolf | |
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Dr. Ida Pauline Rolf
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Born | May 19, 1896 New York |
Died | March 19, 1979 |
Citizenship | United States |
Nationality | American |
Fields | Biochemistry |
Alma mater | Barnard College, Columbia University |
Known for | Structural Integration |
Ida Pauline Rolf (May 19, 1896–March 19, 1979)[1] was a biochemist and the creator of Structural Integration or "Rolfing".
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Rolf was born in New York in the Bronx on May 19, 1896.
She attended Barnard College and graduated in 1916 in the middle of World War I. At the time, young men were fighting in Europe and she was given a unique opportunity for a woman to work as a researcher at the Rockefeller Institute under the supervision of Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene. Levene was then the head of the biochemical laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research.
Rolf's work at the Rockefeller Institute later became her PhD at Columbia University which she obtained in biochemistry from Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1920. Her dissertation was titled Three Contributions to the Chemistry of the Unsaturated Phosphatides. The topic of her research was phosphatides.
After graduating, Rolf continued to work with Levene at the Rockefeller Institute, first in the Department of Chemotherapy and later in the Department of Organic Chemistry, eventually attaining the rank of Associate. From 1919 to 1927 she published 16 scholarly journal papers mostly in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Her research was mostly laboratory studies on biochemical compound: lecithin and cephalin.
In 1927, she left her academic work for reasons of health and family problems. She took leave to study mathematics and atomic physics at the Swiss Technical University in Zurich and was later to develop Structural Integration. Rolf authored a total of 16 academic papers in biochemistry from 1919 to 1927. She also published two papers in scholarly journals on structural integration. Rolf had an h-index of 10 with total number of 299 citations (February, 2007).
(from Institute for Scientific Information.
Dr. Rolf began developing her system in the 1920s to help the chronically disabled who had been unable to find help elsewhere. Her main goal was of organizing the human bodily structure in relation to gravity. This method was originally called Postural Release and later Structural Integration, also commonly known as Rolfing.
In 1971, Dr. Rolf founded The Guild for Structural Integration, which later changed its name to The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration.[2] Her second son Richard, helped to continue developing and refining rolfing, as well as assisting in studies of the healing effects of structural integration on the handicapped. Ida and Richard also taught rolfing classes at locations around the United States. Based for many years in New York city, Ida and Richard worked together to advance the practice and to make the general public aware of the practice and benefits of rolfing.
Rolf was married to Walter Frederick Demmerle. They had had two sons, Alan M., and Richard R. Richard was involved in his mother's rolfing project and continued her work.
Feitis, Rosemary. 1985. Rolfing and Physical Reality. Healing Arts Press