Leonore Rachelle Brecher was born on 1886 in Botoșani, Romania. Relatives made it possibility to study zoology and botany at the universities of Iași and Chernivtsi after graduating from high school. During the war she went to Vienna, where she continued her studies and since 1915 researched at the Biological Research Institute the ” Vivarium ” of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , in the Prater. In 1916 Leonore Brecher did her doctorate at the University of Vienna under Hans Przibram with a dissertation on “The pupae colorations of the cabbage white butterfly”.
Scholarships made it possible for Leonore Brecher to do research at the Pathological Institute of the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin, at the Biochemical Institute in Cambridge, at the Zoological Institute in Rostock and at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel between 1926 and 1933. After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, the researcher was forced to return to Austria at the BVA, but after the “Anschluss” she also lost this position as a “non-Aryan”. At first she managed to emigrate to Cardiff. Here she took up an unpaid research position at the University. Since the zoologist was unable to find a permanent, paid job or sponsors for her research work, the precarious situation meant that she had to return to Vienna, where she taught in the Jewish school on Kleine Sperlgasse from October 1938. Leonore Brecher’s attempt to emigrate to the USA failed due to bureaucratic hurdles. On September 14, 1942, she was deported to the Maly Trostinec extermination camp near Minsk and murdered on the day of her arrival, September 18, 1942.
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