Corinna de Bort

Corinna de Bort was a French scientist and the daughter of Léon Teisserenc de Bort, the pioneering meteorologist who discovered the stratosphere. Born in the late 19th century, Corinna worked alongside her father at his private meteorological observatory in Trappes, France, assisting in crucial atmospheric research during a transformative period in meteorology. While much of the public recognition went to her father—who made the revolutionary discovery that temperature stops decreasing at a certain altitude, defining the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere—Corinna played an important supporting role in the experimental work and data analysis that made these breakthroughs possible. Her contributions were representative of many women in science during this era who provided essential research support, though they often received limited personal credit. The de Bort family's work fundamentally changed humanity's understanding of Earth's atmosphere and laid the groundwork for modern meteorology and atmospheric physics. Corinna's work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries occurred during a time when women's contributions to science were frequently overlooked, yet she persisted in scientific work alongside one of the field's most important pioneers.