Katharina von Salis Perch-Nielsen

Katharina von Salis was Professor in the Micropaleontology Group of the Geological Institute She was working for the Office of Equal Opportunity at the ETH Zurich. She retired on October 1, 2001.

Katharina von Salis was born on October 26, 1940 in Zurich. She studied geology at the University of Berne where she received her PhD in 1965. She spent the following two years as an assistant at the Geological Institute of the University of Copenhagen, followed by a year at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Back in Copenhagen in 1968, she became a lecturer, then headed of the Department at the Institute of Historical Geology.

In 1974 she transferred to the ETH Zurich and became a senior assistant at the Geological Institute. For three years she also occupied position at the Free University of Amsterdam and she spent another three years with Shell-UK as a part-time consultant in London. Her research covered various aspects of calcareous nannofossils.

Since 1991 - the year of the women's strike in Switzerland - Katharina von Salis has been active in improving the position of women at the ETH Zurich and generally in technology and science at Swiss universities and high schools. Her initial contact office for women has become in 1993 the Office of Equal Opportunity for Men and Women.