Albertine Necker de Saussure

[4] The French Revolution ended Necker's military career and, in 1790, he began teaching as a demonstrator in botany at the University of Geneva, a job he obtained because of his wife's surname.

[5] They lived in Cologny, Switzerland[1] and she became a close friend of her husband's cousin, the prominent writer and intellectual Germaine de Staël.

[4] Albertine's brother Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure became a noted chemist and a pioneering researcher in photosynthesis and plant physiology.

[6] Encouraged by her scientist-father, Horace Bénédict de Saussure, Albertine began, at about age 10, to keep a diary in which she recorded her scientific observations.

[10] In addition, Albertine authorized a French translation of August Wilhelm Schlegel's Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur (1809-1811).

[11] Albertine Necker de Saussure's work l'Education Progressive is acknowledged as an educational classic and was influential in nineteenth-century England.

[8] Albertine Necker de Saussure is one of 999 notable women whose names are inscribed on the Heritage Floor in Judy Chicago's installation piece The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

[4] One of them was crystallographer and geologist Louis Albert Necker, HFRSE FGS (1786-1861)[14] Albertine's grand-nephew, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), became an important linguist and student of semiotics.