Lilly Kolisko The Mystery of Matter

Soili Turunen has produced both a biography and a documentary of the extraordinary life of Lilly Kolisko. Through energetic and focussed devotion to a scientific exploration of matter, Lilly Kolisko shed light on a wider consideration of what matter is, enabling a reevaluation that sheds light on some of the enigmas that still face us today.

Lilly Kolisko (1889 - 1976), born Elisabeth Anna Noha, was an outstanding scientist. She succeeded in developing the anthroposophical approach to a ＂science of life that places the human being at the centre＂ through decades of meticulous and relentless empirical research. She carried out her experiments, especially her rising picture experiments, under difficult and sometimes adventurous conditions; during a total solar eclipse in 1936 in her hotel room in Turkey, on a sea voyage to India, or down a 16-metre-deep shaft in Stuttgart.

Whilst the external circumstances of her work might appear modest to primitive, her approach and her results were qualitatively convincing. Scientific papers are published based on Lilly Kolisko’s work and methods even today.