Helga Königsdorf
Helga Königsdorf (13 July 1938 – 4 May 2014) was an East German author and physicist. Life. She was born in Gera, a farmer's daughter. She went into academia and was appointed to the East Berlin Academy of Sciences of the GDR from 1961 to 1990. Since 1974, she headed the Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics. At age 40, she published her first short-story collection "Meine ungehörigen Träume" ("My Indecent Dreams"). Her writing peers included Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann and Maxie Wander, who worked on woman's rights issues in the GDR in the 70s and  80s. In 1990 she left academia to devote herself to writing full-time. Helga suffered from Parkinson's disease for more than 30 years. English translations. Few of her fiction works have been translated into English. "Fission" was published by Northwestern University Press.