Hedwig Kohn (5 April 1887 – 26 November 1964) was a physicist who was one of only three women (along Lise Meitner and Hertha Sponer) to obtain habilitation (the qualification for university teaching) in physics in Germany before World War II.

[1] Kohn was trained by Lummer in the quantitative determination of the intensity of light, both from broad-band sources, such as a "black body", and from the discrete emission lines of atoms and molecules.

She survived by fulfilling contracts for applied research in the illumination industry until 1938, when she found herself without work or financial resources, and narrowly avoided becoming a victim of the Holocaust.

The hurdles to her obtaining a job offer out of Germany were enhanced by the lack of university positions in western countries during the Great Depression, her German nationality, her age and being a woman.

[1] The journey to her first position at the Women's College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro took Kohn through Berlin, Stockholm, Leningrad, Moscow, Vladivostok, Yokohama, San Francisco, and Chicago.

[1] Kohn set up a laboratory at Duke University and resumed research, where she guided two graduate students to their doctorates and recruited two post-doctoral fellows to assist in her study of flame spectroscopy.

[1] Kohn was trained by Otto Lummer in the quantitative determination of the intensity of light, both from broad-band sources, such as a "black body", and from the discrete emission lines of atoms and molecules.