1 Lazarsfeld’s wives, or: What happened to women sociologists in the 20 th century Christian Fleck 1 Abstract The paper compares the lives of three female social scientists born in the first two decades of the 20 th century and belonging to the first generations that had the opportunity not only to study at universities, but also to realistically consider a professional career in academia. Marie Jahoda, Herta Herzog and Patricia L. Kendall made their ways separately and interacted only rarely with each other, but shared at least one characteristic which influenced their careers: they were married to Paul F. Lazarsfeld, one of the eminent sociologists of the 20 th century, prominent as someone who encouraged and supported many of his collaborators and students. The comparison of these three women shows that they were professionally successful but did not completely prioritize academic work before other interests, ambitions, and obligations. These priorities found a correspondence in their underperformance in academia with regard to the particular preconditions to enter the pantheon of an academic discipline. Both their oeuvres and their academic records suggest that they were not actively striving to become academic “immortals.” Here it is shown that women, even if they are to be located below the “ultra elite,” produced remarkable and memorable intellectual achievements. Keywords: Marie Jahoda – Herta Herzog – Patricia L. Kendall – Female academic careers Prelude The Austrian vernacular allows one to address a person by their occupation, e.g., “Herr Doktor” (verbatim Mister Doctor), and the Austrians extended this practice to wives. In most cases, therefore, a “Frau Professor” was not really a professor but rather a professor’s wife. Only after 1956, when Berta Karlik became the first female professor (in physics) at the University of Vienna, the Austrians saw the need to correct their language. The opportunity to become a (real) “Frau Professor” has opened up all around the world only quite recently—“recently” if one considers that the academic world is relatively slow in its rhythm of generational change. Academia’s average retention period lasts thirty years on average, and due to self-recruitment, fundamental changes have taken place only within the timespan of three generations (or during periods of rapid staff increase 2 ). 1 Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna and Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation, E-mail: fleck@ihs.ac.at. I want to thank the following readers of an earlier version of this paper for their very detailed comments and criticisms: Lotte Bailyn, Matthias Duller, Marianne Egger de Campo, Barbara Hönig, Daniela Jauk, Andreas Kranebitter, Andrea Ploder, Karin Scaria-Braunstein, and Katharina Scherke. An anonymous reviewer deserves to be included in the list of supporting readers. They still might not be satisfied with the character of the present version but they are not responsible for any of the faults and imbalances, which are completely mine. 2 The number of women full professors increased during the expansion periods of the higher education system much more rapidly than in any other period, as Carl Neumayr (2018) has shown for the U.S.