Dr Rahel Plaut (1894-1993) was a medical doctor and researcher in physiology who became the first female academic to be appointed at Hamburg University School of Medicine.

Between 1919 and 1924 she co-authored 25 scientific papers on subjects including metabolism, muscle physiology and infectious disease.

[2] She then moved back to Hamburg where in 1919 she was appointed assistant at Institute of Physiology at the University Hospital in Eppendorf under the direction of Otto Kestner.

From then on she taught unpaid until 1933 at the Physiological Institute and also from home in Neue Rabenstrasse to students of dietetics.

In 1936 she visited England to see her brother Theo Plaut, living in Hull, and explored the possibility of sending her children to school there.